LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Jflanuals of JFattI) anH *D\ity. 

EDITED BY REV. J. S. CANTWELL, D.D. 



A SERIES of short books in exposition of prominent teachings 
of the Universalist Church, and the moral and religious 
obligations of believers. They are prepared by writers selected for 
their ability to present in brief compass *an instructive and helpful 
Manual on the subject undertaken. The volumes will be affirmative 
and constructive in statement, avoiding controversy, while specifically 
unfolding doctrines. 

The Manuals of Faith and Duty are issued at intervals of 
three or four months ; uniform in size, style, and price. 

No. I. THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD. 

By Rev. J. Coleman Adams, D.D., Chicago. 

No. II. JESUS* THE CHRIST. 

By Rev. Si. Crane, D.D., Norwalk, O. 

No. III. REVELATION. 

By Rev. I. M. Atwood, D.D., President of the Theological 

School, Canton, N. Y. 

No. IV. CHRIST IN THE LIFE. 

By Rev. Warren S. Woodbridge, Medford, Mass. 

No. V. SALVATION. 

By Rev. Orello Cone, D.D*, President of Buchtel College, 
Akron, O. 

Number VI. of the Series will be : " The Birth from Above," 
by Rev. Charles Follen Lee. Other volumes and writers will be 
announced hereafter. 



published by the 

UNIVERSALIST PUBLISHING HOUSE, 

BOSTON, MASS. 
Western Branch: 69 Dearborn Street, Chicago. 



Jlanuals of JFaitf) antj Hutg. 
rt ,/ji No. v. 







SALVATION. 



BY 



ORELLO CONE, D.D., 

PRESIDENT OF BUCHTEL COLLEGE, AKRON, 0. 



For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath 
made me free from the law of sln and death. 

Romans viii. 2. 




BOSTON: 
UNIVERSALIST PUBLISHING HOUSE. 

1889. 



CI 5" 



Copyright, 1889, 
By the Universalist Publishing House. 




mnifcersitg Press: 
John Wilson & Son, Cambridge. 



to 






CONTENTS. 



Section Page 

Introduction 5 

i. solvation in the old testament .... 8 

II. Salvation as Taught by Jesus 27 

1. Relation to the Old Testament ... 30 

2. The Ethical Factor 36 

3. The Religious Factor 44 

III. The Pauline Doctrine 54 

IV. The Doctrine in Hebrews 65 

V. Salvation and Science 63 

VI. Secular Salvation 74 

VII. The Intelligent, Emotional, and Volun- 
tary Factors 80 

VIII. "Probation" and Morals 85 

IX. Universality of Salvation 92 



01 trjose forjo care for religion, trje multitude of us foant 
trje materialism of trje ^pocalgpse; trje fefo foant a baguere* 
ligiositg. Science, torjicrj more antJ more teacrjes us to fintr 
in trje unapparent trje real, toill gratMalljr serbe to conquer 
trje materialism of trje popular religion* 3Trje frienfcs of 
bague religiosity, on trje otrjer rjantJ, bill be more anH more 
taugrjt bg experience trjat a trjeologg, a scientific appreciation 
of trje facts of religion, is foantcti for religion ; but a tj)c* 
ologs torjicrj is a true trjeologg, not a false* 

Matthew Arnold. 



SALVATION. 



INTRODUCTION. 

EVERY religion presupposes an unnatural, 
discordant relation of man to the spiritual 
laws of his being. Perfect, he would have no 
need of a religion, and would never originate 
one. Dependent and fallible, the sharp sense 
of weakness and spiritual want he cannot cast 
out, nor can he escape the obtrusive presence 
of the higher Powers. Deep mystery surrounds 
him, in which he can read little save the char- 
acters of law, written large and luminous. 
Finding himself out of harmony with the great 
order into which he is cast, he is filled with 
unrest, and sets himself to a solution of the 
problem of reconciliation. This consciousness 
of discord and the struggle with the problem 
how to attain harmony denote the beginning of 
religion, and his solution of the problem marks 
the degree and character of his spiritual insight. 



6 SALVATION. 

If his thought do not rise above Nature, his re- 
ligion will begin and end in a propitiation of her 
supposed malign forces, If he attain the appre- 
hension of a persona] benignant Power and Will 
superior to the natural order, originating and 
imposing a moral law, his religion will be a 
sense of dependence upon God, worship, com- 
munion, aspiration for harmony with Him, inde- 
structible confidence and faith. The nature of 
his idea of God will determine his conception of 
salvation. 

Salvation implies a bondage in certain evil 
conditions from which it is a deliverance. It 
sinks in man's thought to the level of release 
from temporal misfortune, social or political 
calamity, sorrow, physical pain or discomfort, or 
rises into the realm of purely spiritual relations, 
according to the note of his interpretation of the 
Supreme Being. Accordingly, its doctrine of 
salvation reveals the inmost character of a re- 
ligion. It is its vital part. Herein does religion 
affect man most powerfully, because herein it 
immediately touches his life. His conduct sinks 
to a lower or rises to a higher point according 
as, through his conception of salvation, he ap- 
prehends his relation to God. Whether in his 






SALVATION. 7 

worship he shall grovel in rites, ceremonies, and 
bloody offerings, in propitiation and atonement, 
to reconcile an offended and changeable Deity, 
or in spirit and truth rise into communion with 
Him who is a Spirit, is largely determined by his 
ideas regarding this central point in religion. / 

As a moral being, capable of conceiving an 
ideal development and endowed with a passion 
for its attainment, man cannot but be restless 
under the bondage of his lower impulses, and 
struggle with an energy proportional to his 
ethical enlightenment for deliverance, or salva- 
tion, from the degradation into which they bring 
him. The most intensely interesting and pa- 
thetic part of the story of his life is the record 
of this struggle. As a spiritual being, believing 
in God as a moral Governor and Father, the 
sense of this discord between his higher and 
lower nature is sharpened to its acutest note in 
the consciousness of sin. In the Biblical con- 
ception of man this latter relation is brought 
into prominence with great pathos and power. 
Very significant, too, it is that on the first page 
of the Bible, in the legend of the Fall, is sounded 
a joyful note of deliverance in the announce- 
ment that the seed of the woman, the essential 



8 SALVATION. 

man, — man realizing the Divine plan, — shall 
be victorious in the contest with the seed of the 
serpent, the rude and brutal forces of his nature. 
The bitterness of this conflict is manifested in 
the long and all but hopeless struggle of the 
Prophets with the obduracy of their people, 
gives a tone of sadness and despondency to 
many a Biblical writing, and finds intensest ex- 
pression in the sharp cry of despair and pain 
wrung from the soul of the great Apostle to the 
Gentiles. 

I. — Salvation in the Old Testament. 

If the sense of bondage to sin is profound in 
the human soul, not less so is that of the ur- 
gency of deliverance from this condition. No 
more sagacious interpretation of human nature 
in this relation has been made by any of the 
great teachers of men than is furnished in the 
works of the conspicuous writers of the Old 
Testament. So obvious is this to every careful 
and unbiassed student of these writings, that one 
hazards nothing in saying that the religion of 
the Old Testament is pre-eminent among the 
religions of antiquity for the distinctness and 
energy of its conception of salvation. What- 



SALVATION. 9 

ever may be thought of the remedy which it 
proposes for sin, however limited its spiritual 
horizon may be deemed, its vigorous accentu- 
ation of the dreadful fact of sin and of the ur- 
gency of deliverance from the bondage of the 
violated law is indisputable. 

The writers of the Old Testament set forth 
no philosophy of sin, either regarding its origin 
or nature, and do not attempt a solution of the 
problems which it has presented to the reflec- 
tion of later ages. With the exception of the 
author of the book of Job, they do not enter 
with serious purpose upon metaphysical in- 
quiries. One of the two documents which criti- 
cism traces in the Pentateuch (the Elohistic) 
does, indeed, give a mythical account of the 
Fall of man and of the entrance of sin into the 
world, assuming the human race to have begun 
its existence in a state of childlike innocence 
and ignorance of good and evil* But the Je- 
hovist narrator knows nothing of all this, and 
there are no decided marks of its influence in 
the later writers. The doctrine of Original Sin, 
as it has unhappily been set forth in Christian 
theology, finds no support in the canonical books 
of the Old Testament. The natural weakness 



10 SALVATION. 

and tendency to sin in man are recognized, — 
that the imagination of his heart is evil ; that 
he was shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin ; 
that he dwells in a house of claj 7 , and has his 
foundation in the dust, 1 etc. It is thus taught 
that man has in a certain sense inherited sin, 
that is, has received by heredity the germ of its 
development, and is, accordingly, to a degree 
excusable ; that God has not willed it, but only 
set the possibility of it in man, whom He has 
created with the power of self-determination 
and of overcoming in the struggle with evil 
passions. 

The Hebrew conception of sin finds its ex- 
planation only in connection with the theo- 
cratic idea. From this it receives its predominant 
tone, although there is not a little teaching 
which proceeds upon general ethical and spirit- 
ual principles. The law, the ceremonial pre- 
scriptions, the entire cultus are enjoined upon 
the people as expressing the will of Jehovah, 
the theocratic head of the nation; and the great- 
est importance could not but be attached to all 
acts and observances by which a true citizen of 
the theocracy was distinguished from the rest 

1 Genesis viii. 21 ; Psalm li. 7 ; Job iv. 17. 



SALVATION. 11 

of mankind. Hence the externality which 
characterized all expression of religion, and the 
degenerate formalism which stifled worship. 
How deep-seated this perversion was, appears 
in the vehement denunciations of the cere- 
monial observances by the Prophets, who stand 
forth, one might almost dare to say, as the 
preachers of a new morality and religion, and 
teach that only he who is of a contrite spirit 
and trembleth at the word of God shall find 
favor in His sight. Yet are not the Prophets 
themselves outdone in the denunciation of the- 
ocratic sins, or offences against Jehovah as the 
Ruler of the nation, who resents as injuries to 
Himself all acts prejudicial to its welfare. 

The immediate personal relation of sin to 
Jehovah is strongly set forth in the Hebrew 
theology and theodicy. Jehovah is represented 
as having His people in charge, as having en- 
tered into a covenant with them and earnestly 
seeking their welfare. On His part the cove- 
nant is sacredly kept, for He is the Righteous 
One. Through the teachers and Prophets whom 
He has commissioned, His will has been made 
known and strictly enjoined. But the people 
are unrighteous, breakers of the covenant, idol- 



12 SALVATION. 

aters. Their violation of the law is character- 
ized as sedition, revolt, apostasy. It is an 
arrant wrong, a foolish wickedness, an aimless 
and unsubstantial proceeding, since it is di- 
rected against the All-Powerful, who will smite 
His enemies with confusion and overthrow. 
Enemies of God, indeed, are they who break 
His covenant and disobey His law, and " He will 
wound their head and hairy scalp." The an- 
thropopathism of the Hebrew writers, of which 
a considerable residuum is left after due allow- 
ance has been made for Oriental modes of ex- 
pression, has colored their idea of sin as related 
to the Deity, and perhaps led them to give ex- 
cessive prominence to this side of it. The 
wrath of God against His " enemies," however 
these writers may have conceived it, and the 
swift overthrow which awaits them, are expres- 
sions so often recurring that they can hardly 
be regarded as merely poetic ornaments of 
speech. Rather, such words convey what to 
those who so constantly use them was a terrible 
reality. 

The phase of sin in which it is immediately 
related to man — its human side — is likewise 
set forth in the Old Testament with thorough 



SALVATION. 13 

earnestness and in a tone of energetic warning. 
The swift and certain consequences of disobedi- 
ence are proclaimed ; mischief and destruction 
pursue the transgressor, and no human acu- 
men, no joining of hand in hand, can avert the 
doom. Are not the eyes of the Lord in every 
place ? The wings of the morning cannot bear 
one where He is not in His protecting or 
avenging power. 

The consequences of sin, and therefore the 
nature of salvation, are, however, more definitely 
determined from the point of view of the the- 
ocracy. Sin, as ordinarily treated in the Old 
Testament, being a theocratic offence, receives 
in reference to its effects a theocratic interpre- 
tation. Now the theocracy, being regarded from 
the " particularistic " point of view as a temporal 
order of things, must find its completion in the 
world. Accordingly, the Hebrew view of sin 
does not include a retribution future to the 
present life. In the story of the Fall, death is 
announced as the penalty of disobedience. But 
this doctrine appears to have exerted no influ- 
ence upon Hebrew theology. Indeed, the ac- 
count is not, on the surface at least, consistent 
with itself; for in Genesis iii. 19, man is spoken 



14 SALVATION. 

of as naturally mortal, and in verse 22 it is im- 
plied that the only way to prevent his acquiring 
immortality is to cut off his approach to the tree 
of life. Hence death cannot be regarded, ac- 
cording to the legend itself, as the consequence 
of disobedience, unless indirectly, through ex- 
clusion from the garden where man might have 
eaten of the unforbidden tree of life. 

The popular Hebrew doctrine of the relation 
of death to sin is not, however, without close 
relation to this ancient tradition thus inter- 
preted. For while length of days and temporal 
prosperity are regarded as the sure reward of 
the righteous, it is taught that the expectation 
of the wicked shall perish, that their days shall 
be shortened, — like sheep are they laid in the 
grave. 1 On the other hand, long life is prom- 
ised as the reward of obedience to the law of 
God ; and life and good, death and evil, are set 
over against each other in the solemn summary 
of the divine order of the theocracy. 2 Probably 
no stronger and intenser expressions of the tem- 
poral disaster which a wicked life may cause 
are found in any literature than the Biblical 

1 Proverbs x. 25, 27 ; Psalm xlix. 

2 Exodus xx. 12; Deuteronomy xxx. 15-20. 



SALVATION. 15 

writers employ. Their insight is in this regard 
remarkably clear. They are seers to whom the 
wisdom of ages and the lessons of human ex- 
perience stand forth clearly defined in their 
naked reality. In how fine a contrast are the 
ways of the righteous and of the evil doer set 
in these words : " The path of the just is as 
the shining light, that shineth more and more 
unto the perfect day ; " but " the way of the 
wicked is as darkness : they know not at what 
they stumble." How terrible the picture of the 
wicked man, whose spiritual vision is dimmed, 
going down into ever-increasing darkness, and 
at last losing moral discernment, so that he does 
not know at what he stumbles ! 

The fact, however, that in actual life the 
w T icked often appear prosperous, and the righ- 
teous suffer affliction, presented to the Hebrew a 
problem which he could not solve by postponing 
the adjustment to a future life, because of the 
temporal limitation of his view. He comforted 
himself as best he could with the reflection that 
the death of the wicked must be as dreadful as 
that of the righteous was beautiful and full of 
peace. In despair of any solution of this problem, 
some of the less devout and perhaps less profound 



16 SALVATION. 

adopted the point of view of pessimistic indiffer- 
entism, which found expression in the epicurean 
motto, " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow 
we die." The pious, however, cherished such 
slender consolation as they could find in their 
temporal hopes. The happiness of the wicked 
endures, they reasoned, only for a day ; speedily 
are they hurried off the scene of existence : but 
the righteous are delivered from the peril of 
death, and at least may enjoy a long life and a 
peaceful demise, In the admonitions of the 
writer of Proverbs, in the exhortations of the 
Prophets, and in the warning and exulting 
strains of the Psalmists, a utilitarian practical 
wisdom attains a most energetic expression. 
/ The Hebrew conception of salvation was de- 
termined by that of sin and its consequences, as 
held under the law and by the Prophets. Sal- 
vation, so far as it was legally and ethically 
regarded, was simply a bondage to the law. 
Deliverance, indeed, it was from the bondage 
which the broken law imposed in the form of 
penalty ; but under the intolerable burden of 
ceremonial and a tedious cultus, he still remained 
who had performed the rites and offered the 
atoning sacrifice. Jehovah, through the law, 



SALVATION. 17 

was the Saviour who, by severe discipline, force, 
and penalty, restrains the evil passions of men. 
He is conceived as the Supreme Lawgiver and 
Executive, a being of unapproachable majesty, 
revealing Himself in the terrific forces of Nature, 
— in thunder, lightning, earthquake. A free, 
joyous, and peaceful development, a hopeful 
striving to attain an ideal spiritual life, a serene 
abiding in love and communion with God as 
Father, w r ere necessarily impossible from this 
theological point of view. / Salvation is a nega- 
tion, a release from fear and pain, rather than 
an impulse to a fresh and positive ethical striv- 
ing. No one who has understood the real nature 
of the Hebrew legalism will think Paul's ar- 
raignment of it too strong. There is a note of 
melancholy, a sense of bondage and weariness 
in that vast system of formalism and severity, 
which are in strong contrast with the joyful 
consciousness of liberty, expressed by no one 
w r ith more force and fervor than by this same 
Paul. Not wholly wanting, indeed, to the 
Hebrew religious poetry are the cheerful tone of 
mind and the exhortation to rejoice in the Lord. 
But how often does the spirit in which the re- 
joicing is called for throw over it a veil of sad- 



18 SALVATION. 

ness ! — " Let the people tremble • " "a fire go- 
eth before Him and burnetii up His enemies." 

As a means of counteracting or breaking the 
relentless force of the law and furnishing de- 
liverance, or salvation, from its curse, sacrifices 
held a prominent place in Hebrew legalism. In 
the vast number of cases in which the law was 
violated through ignorance, weakness of the 
flesh, or error, provision was made to atone for 
the fault, to make restitution, by the offering of 
sacrifices to avert the withdrawing of the Divine 
favor and the retributive consequences of the 
offence. It is not to the present purpose to 
enter into a minute account of the sacrificial 
prescripts. Suffice it to remark that the com- 
parative history of religions shows the high an- 
tiquity and wide prevalence of propitiatory 
offerings to the gods. The institution of sacri- 
fices was not of Mosaic origin, nor does the 
elaborate form of the ceremonial as it is laid 
down in the Pentateuch date from an earlier 
period than the age of Solomon. The religious 
feeling out of which the sacrificial system and 
ceremonial sprang was that the Divine favor 
could be secured by the offering of some valu- 
able possession. The burnt-offering was an 






SALVATION. 19 

expression of reverence towards God, of devo- 
tion to Him, and willingness for His service. 
The thank-offering was a return for a benefit 
received. The sin-offering expressed an ac- 
knowledgment of the disturbance through trans- 
gression of the peaceful relation with the Deity, 
and was offered with a view to reconciliation, to 
annulment of the sin in the sense that its penal 
consequences should not follow if the sacrifice 
were graciously received. Symbolical, perhaps, 
in a general sense, these sacrifices were. But 
there can be little doubt that the sin-offering 
was regarded as substitutional, or at least as fur- 
nishing satisfaction for the offence on account 
of which it was made. M The life of the flesh," 
which " is in the blood," " is given upon the 
altar to make an atonement for the life " of the 
transgressor, forfeited by the sin. 1 The analogy 
of other ancient religions is not without signifi- 
cance in relation to the interpretation of this 
sacrificial rite. Precisely in this idea of the im- 
portance in itself of the external side of the sac- 
rifice lay the imperfection and the peril of the 

1 Leviticus xvii. 11. This view is philologically established 
by the fact that the Hebrew word for sin-offering comes from 
another which signifies " to make restitution for something 
lost/' etc. 



20 SALVATION. 

entire cultiis. The belief that the offering per se 
was a meritorious act, and a magical means of 
propitiating the Deity and averting the penal 
consequences of disobedience, could not but re- 
sult in the loss of the sentiment of worship and 
the sway of a degrading formalism, — in such 
a moral and spiritual degeneracy, in fact, as 
called forth the vehement denunciation of the 
Prophets. 

While the acceptance of a sacrifice may be 
regarded from a strictly legal point of view 
as an acknowledgment of satisfaction, it was 
deemed in the Hebrew theology a modification 
of the law in the interest of mildness. There 
was found, therefore, room for mercy. God, as 
the Saviour of His people, is accordingly repre- 
sented as forgiving sin. As inexorably severe, 
He is said, indeed, to visit the sins of the 
fathers upon the children ; but in the later 
development of the people this doctrine is 
renounced. Under the law certain sins are 
passed by on account of sacrifices offered ac- 
cording to the ceremonial requirements. But 
the Prophets attained a higher point of view, 
and represented the Divine forgiveness as a free 
act of grace, conditioned, indeed, upon repent- 



SALVATION. 21 

ance and abandonment of sinful conduct. It 
should be kept in mind, however, that the domi- 
nant note in the Hebrew doctrine of forgive- 
ness and salvation is deliverance from the 
external, temporal consequences attached to 
sin by the law. It would be a great error to 
read into this theology the ethical and spiritual 
apprehension of sin as a violation of the nature 
of man, the effects of which follow in the soul 
by irreversible natural law. It is arbitrary, not 
natural, law which is taken into account. The 
doctrine, however, that righteousness, obedi- 
ence, and harmony with God are " good " and 
desirable, and that they insure peace as well as 
prosperity, does not fail of frequent and decided 
expression. In proportion as the Psalmists and 
Prophets rise above the earlier legalism they 
attain a more spiritual point of view. The 
theocratic conception of forgiveness and salva- 
tion was, however, scarcely transcended by any 
of the writers of the canonical books of the 
Old Testament. To them Jehovah was the 
God of Israel. The Divine mercy and love 
were for the members of the theocratic com- 
munity only. Destruction would overwhelm all 
who were enemies of these. The hope, which 



22 SALVATION. 

finds expression in some of the Prophets, that 
all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation 
of God, could have found its expected realiza- 
tion only in the conversion of the heathen to 
the theocratic worship. The limits of parti- 
cularism were not passed until Judaism came 
in contact with Greek culture. Whether the 
broadening of mind was the result of inter- 
course with foreign and particularly Hellenistic 
tendencies, or came by an inward development, 
may be open to question ; but in the apocry- 
phal Book of Wisdom are found conceptions of 
God which are closely akin to those of Jesus. 
He is here represented as a Spirit friendly to 
man. Great and small has God created, and 
He cares equally for all. He loves all that is, 
and abhors nothing which he has made ; for if 
He hated anything He would not have created 
it. His imperishable spirit is in all. This noble 
idea may, however, very naturally have been 
derived from the ancient Hebrew story of the 
creation of man, the profound significance of 
which had for ages been buried under a vast 
system of exclusiveness and national conceit. 

Under the law there was, however, a large 
number of sins for which no forgiveness was 



SALVATION. 23 

provided. The transgressor who had been 
found guilty of these could hope for no salva- 
tion. He was doomed. He must die, and 
this was the end as an awful warning to "those 
which remain." For sacrificing to Moloch, a 
man was condemned to be put to death by- 
stoning. If a brother, son, daughter, wife, or 
friend entice a man to worship other gods, the 
man so enticed is ordered to " surely kill" the 
enticer ; and the people are enjoined to stone 
him to death, to make his destruction sure. 
For blasphemy the offender, whether a native 
or a stranger, is doomed to death, " and all the 
congregation shall certainly stone him." The 
man who " will not hearken unto the priest" 
has committed an unpardonable sin and must 
die, that the people may " fear and do no more 
presumptuously." It is corpmanded in heart- 
breaking detail that the father and mother of 
"a stubborn and rebellious son " shall seize him 
and bring him as accusers to the elders of his 
city, that all the men of his city may stone him 
till he be dead. 1 The numerous curses in the 

1 In the twentieth chapter of Numbers is a long list of of- 
fences for which death alone could atone. The sad Book of 
Deuteronomy abounds in them. 



24 SALVATION. 

twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, pro- 
nounced upon those who should hot keep the 
law, are equivalent to sentences of death or an- 
athemas worse than death. Repulsive as all 
this unmitigated severity is to a humane senti- 
ment, it should not be overlooked that a tone 
of profound moral earnestness pervades the 
Old Testament; that duty, with whatever de- 
fects of ethical conception it may have been 
apprehended, is enjoined with earnest emphasis 
and endless repetition ; that the will of God is 
incessantly proclaimed as the supreme, invio- 
lable law ; that the disaster and ruin wrought 
by sin are exhibited in so terrible a light as to 
excite deep horror of it in the minds of the 
people, and that the praises of righteousness 
are sung in sweet and lofty strains. Much 
easier, indeed, it is to criticise this religious 
system than to invent another which could 
have been established under the conditions 
which determined this, or, if it had existed, 
would have served the educational end which 
this did undoubtedly serve. 

The Hebrew conception of salvation can be 
understood only in connection with the national 
religious and patriotic spirit. This is true at 



SALVATION. 25 

least of the later development of the doctrine 
in the Prophets. To these great teachers Israel 
appeared as the people of mankind, — a world- 
people, having a providential calling which dis- 
tinguished them from all other races, — and as a 
mission-people in the interest of monotheistic 
worship. Idolatry, all worship of other gods 
than Jehovah, it is their calling to overcome, 
whether in their midst or among the surround- 
ing peoples. An immediate personal responsi- 
bility to God — no ceremonial intervening — 
is emphasized. The heavy guilt which rests 
upon the people can be removed by no sacri- 
fice but that of sin itself, — by repentance and 
return to right worship and life. The inner "j 
law of the conscience comes in the Prophets to 
clear recognition and forcible expression. The 
great national mission is, however, kept con- 
stantly in view, and salvation is generally 
conceived in relation to this, and as including 
whatever will further this providential calling 
and work, — deliverance from idolatry, from the 
power of enemies, from exile and all temporal 
evil, such as oppression, violence, and internal 
dissension. But one personal Saviour is recog- 
nized in this prophetic teaching, and that one 



26 



SALVATION. 



is Jehovah, the all-mighty, in whose right hand 
is victory, and He will rear and nurture Israel 
as a peculiar people. For their salvation — that 
is, for the preservation of their national mono- 
theistic integrity — He employs the teachings 
of the Prophets, misfortunes of various kinds, 
and especially does He scourge them with the 
heathen nations, whom He brings down upon 
them (such is the Hebrew conception of history) 
to lay waste and destroy, to slay and carry into 
exile for their disobedience and revolt. It be- 
longs, however, to the point of view of the 
Prophets, while they recognize Jehovah as the 
true Saviour of His people, to mediate the sal- 
vation through the sufferings of the righteous, 
who in some sense atone for the sins of the 
nation. Thus the second Isaiah (chapters xl.- 
lxvi.) looks for the " healing " of the people 
by means of the "stripes" which the faithful 
theocratic remnant had suffered in the exile. 
Some of the Prophets do, however, expect a 
future salvation through a personal deliverer of 
the line of David. Out of Bethlehem should 
come forth one who should be u a ruler in 
Israel ;" he should be a "rod out of the stem 
of Jesse," "Wonderful, Counsellor, Prince of 



SALVATION. 27 

Peace ; " he should sit on the throne of David, 
restore the fallen power of the nation, and set 
free, cleanse, and glorif}' the enslaved and hu- 
miliated people. The failure of this hope to 
be realized in the terms in which it was con- 
ceived, illustrates the defects and limitations of 
the Hebrew idea of salvation, which, though 
occasionally showing gleams of a noble spirit- 
ual conception, was in general hampered by its 
theocratic point of view, and confined to an 
earthly and temporal scope. Under these con- 
ditions it was not adapted to become a perma- 
nent factor in a universal religion. 

II. — Salvation as taught by Jesus. 

A doctrine of salvation appropriate to a 
world-religion was presented by the great 
Teacher, who by reason of it has earned the 
title of Saviour of Mankind. 1 This title will be 
the more readily accorded to him by all the 
world, the more the truly spiritual and universal 
character of his teaching is recognized, the more 
it is apprehended in its wonderful simplicity 
and liberated from the burden of dogma under 

1 A forthcoming volume in this series of Manuals is en- 
titled /' The Saviour of the World." —Editor. 



28 SALVATION. 

which it has been for ages smothered and dis- 
torted. As a spiritual interpreter of human 
nature, Jesus of Nazareth has never been sur- 
passed. As an embodiment and manifestation 
of whatever is noblest, purest, and tenderest in 
man, he stands unrivalled among the great re- 
ligious teachers of the ages. Other personality 
so morally fruitful, so abounding in intensity of 
spiritual power, has never appeared in history. 
In him all that is most godlike and most human 
was united in harmony, and found consummate 
expression. His life is at once the enigma of 
the centuries and the solution of their problems. 
In the universality of his religious genius, in 
the scope and sureness of his ethical insight, in 
the depth of his sympathy and the breadth and 
lucidity of his understanding, in the intensity 
of his sufferings and the completeness of his vic- 
tory, he was the true Son of Man. Tempted in 
all points, and assailed by the powers of sin and 
the ferocity of enraged and brutal men, he held 
with a firm grasp the sceptre of spiritual ascen- 
dancy which shall never depart from his hand. 

Although reared in the religious faith of his 
people, nurtured in the law and the Prophets, 
Jesus recognized and adopted only the spiritual 






SALVATION. 29 

and universal principles of Hebraism and Juda- 
ism. The imperishable hope of salvation, which 
had been cherished in the hearts of Jews through 
many ages of oppression, he sought to rekindle, 
indeed, but only in giving it an entirely new 
interpretation. In the alchemy of genius all 
that it touches is turned into gold. Out of the 
spiritual crucible of Jesus the Jewish conception 
of salvation came forth transfigured. Now no 
longer did it bear its antique form of national 
and theocratic self-seeking, its cramped and de- 
graded aspect of bondage to the law. Inter- 
preting the striving and aspiration of mankind 
for deliverance from servitude to sin in the 
light of the great idea of the universal Father- 
hood, he exalted salvation to the rank of a 
world-principle of life. Not now was it to be 
consummated in Jerusalem rebuilt and the 
magnificence of the temple restored, not in cere- 
mony of sacrifice and voice of prayer on Geri- 
zim, nor yet in the pitying answer to the mute 
despair of exiles by the rivers of Babylon, which 
should wake their silent harps to theocratic 
melodies, but in the deliverance of a world from 
the dominion of selfishness, in the universal 
reign of the kingdom of God. 



30 SALVATION. 

1. Relation to the Old Testament. — The po- 
sition which Jesus assumed towards the sacred 
writings of the Jews, regarded both as docu- 
ments of a theocratic national religion and as 
literature, indicates the point of view from which 
his teaching of salvation must be considered. 
In the freedom of his spirit, in the grandeur of 
his conception of life, and in the clearness of his 
insight into the divine order of the world, he 
resembled and yet surpassed the greatest of the 
Prophets. The most spiritual of these teachers 
had no vision of a restored Jerusalem without 
its temple and altar, which shou'd stand as 
symbols not only of worship, but of national 
supremacy and splendor. But the establishment 
of a political, theocratic kingdom Jesus repudi- 
ated as foreign to his aim and opposed to the 
spirit of his mission. He sought to dissipate in 
the minds of his followers all dreams of worldly 
dominion. As he came not to be ministered 
unto, but to minister, so he taught them that in 
his kingdom the position of servant was the 
chief honor to be attained. He regarded the 
whole sacrificial system, the theocratic striving 
and ambition, as nourishing the selfishness which 
it was his mission to overcome by fostering the 



SALVATION. 31 

spirit of universal love. To the temporal Mes- 
sianic prophecies and expectations of his nation, 
he gave no heed and no encouragement. " My 
kingdom is not of this world," was his answer 
to the ineffectual fanaticism of those of his own 
time in whom the national spirit of the Prophets 
still excited futile strivings after political liberty 
and glory. He expressed no sympatlry with 
the bondage to Rome, under which his people 
groaned, nor with their fruitless longing for de- 
liverance from its chains. He even enjoined 
that what was due to Caesar should be rendered 
to him, and did not neglect to add that duties 
to God must also be discharged. Not the re- 
storer of the ancient national supremacy would 
he be, but the founder of a new kingdom. 

In Matthew v. 17-21, Jesus makes a formal 
declaration of his relation to the economy of the 
Old Testament. As to the law or the Prophets, 
he came not, he says, to destroy, but to fulfil them. 
Not one jot or tittle of the law shall pass till all 
be fulfilled ; and he that breaketh the least of 
the commandments, and teacheth men so, shall 
be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. 
Yet in the same discourse he takes a position 
above the law, abrogating or modifying particu- 



32 SALVATION. 

lar commandments, and setting up his personal 
authority unqualifiedly against that of " those of 
old time." In respect to the law against homi- 
cide he places the disposition on an equal foot- 
ing with the act. As to adultery, it is within, 
in the cherished lustful passion as well as in the 
act contemplated in the law. The law of di- 
vorce is essentially qualified, and that of re- 
taliation is abrogated, love even of enemies 
being enjoined in the place of taking an eye for 
an eye. The difficulty in reconciling these an- 
tithetic declarations does not lie in the opposi- 
tion of the general statement of Jesus that he 
came to fulfil the law and the Prophets to the 
free and independent position taken afterwards. 
For in this very position is unmistakably indi- 
cated the manner in which he would have the 
law fulfilled. In harmony with the spirit of all 
his teaching, he here emphasizes the principle 
that the moral quality of actions is determined 
by the disposition, and that the true ethical ful- 
filment of the law is not in the outward act, but 
in the inward feeling and intention. The fun- 
damental opposition of his doctrine to the 
legalism of the Old Testament could not be 
more forcibly expressed by one who might 



SALVATION. 33 

desire to counteract the defects of that system, 
while retaining whatever in it was of universal 
and permanent worth. But the point of her- 
meneutical contention is in the declaration that 
not one jot (the smallest Hebrew letter), nor 
tittle (the hook, by which nearly similar Hebrew 
letters are distinguished from one another), 
should pass till all be fulfilled, and that he who 
breaks the least of the commandments should 
be least in the kingdom of heaven. The prob- 
lem is to reconcile this emphatic language of 
legalism and the letter with the subsequent 
teaching. To explain it by calling the expres- 
sion hyperbolic is to evade the difficulty. For 
in saying that he came to fulfil the law, Jesus 
had already expressed himself quite fully, in 
a general way, and these words can indicate 
nothing short of an intention to set forth in most 
emphatic terms the legalistic point of view. 
They convey a universal declaration, and cannot, 
accordingly, be referred to his own fulfilment 
of the law. 

The difficulties in the interpretation of the 
passage have led some eminent scholars to doubt 
that the words were spoken by Jesus, on the 
ground of their inconsistency with the spirit of 



34 SALVATION. 

his doctrine in general, and with his unmis- 
takable attitude towards the legalism and liter- 
alism which they express. No solution of the 
difficulty which they present can probably be 
given which will satisfy every one. Whether by 
exegetical pressure they be brought into accord 
with what follows or be set aside as added to 
the tradition or the record, they must be in any 
case subjected to a somewhat violent treatment. 
For yield they must to the force of the analogy 
of the teaching and spirit of Jesus. His attitude 
in respect to the traditional legalism and the liter- 
alism of the law is indicated in his declarations 
regarding the Sabbath. When his disciples are 
censured for plucking the ears of corn on that 
day and he for healing the sick, he declares 
himself superior to the Sabbath, thus putting 
his personal authority against prescripts of the 
law. In his transfiguring of the Sabbath it 
becomes simply an institution to serve man, not 
to enslave him. Man is placed above it. It 
was made for him, not he for it ; and he may 
freely use it, according to his own conscience, 
as it will most promote his welfare. To the 
complaint of the scribes and Pharisees that his 
disciples neglected the washing of hands before 



SALVATION. 35 

eating, he answered that they made the law in- 
effectual by their traditions, and he took occa- 
sion to call the multitude together and teach that 
not that which enters into a man defiles him, 
but that which proceeds out of his mouth, thus 
showing that he regarded the Mosaic law as to 
purification as morally indifferent. That he at- 
tributed to the law only a relative validity is 
evident from his deriving the Mosaic permission 
of divorce from regard to the hardness of the 
people's hearts. It is apparent, then, that he 
ascribed to the law no absolute and binding au- 
thority. If he did not openly renounce it ; if 
he enjoined upon his followers to do whatever 
the scribes and Pharisees sitting in Moses' seat 
should bid them do ; if he in his denunciation 
of the Pharisees told them they ought to have 
practised mercy and judgment, and not to have 
left undone the payment of tithes of mint, anise 
and cummin, — it was because he did not choose 
to come to an open rupture with the law, but 
believed that he had taught principles which 
. would in time work its dissolution and destruc- 
tion and set man free from its bondage. 

His treatment of the Old Testament as com- 
posing the sacred writings of his nation is like- 



36 SALVATION. 

wise remarkable, and in striking contrast to that 
of his contemporaries, as Philo for example, 
and to that of his follower's, the evangelists. 
The allegorizing of these betrays their bondage 
to a theory of the infallibility of those writings, 
while he put himself above them, modifying or 
setting aside single prescripts, asserting his au- 
thority as Son of Man to judge for himself, to be 
Lord over all institutions and the slave of none, 
and declaring as the principle of his own life 
and the watchword of progress for men, " It is 
the spirit that quickeneth." 

2. The Ethical Factor. — Although not openly, 
yet really, setting aside the law, Jesus proceeded 
in his teaching from an important point of view 
of the old religion, — the moral, the practical 
application of truth to the life of men. His 
voice is the voice of Moses and the Prophets, 
but it sounds a new note, — the note of a uni- 
versal human sympathy. The present life and 
the fortune of men in it hold a prominent place 
in his conception of salvation. One looks in 
vain through his teachings for traces of that 
eager, nervous solicitude about the destiny of 
the soul in another life which has unhappily 
given to the popular Christian idea of salvation 






SALVATION. 37 

a too decided tone of self-interest. That man 
should have his daily bread, be not led into 
temptation, be delivered from evil, — these 
were chief desiderata, aims of prayer and work. 
Morality is with him no trivial, secondary con- 
cern, to be put aside in the hasty pursuit of 
a religion valued more for its ulterior advan- 
tages than for its help in the present stress. 
Rather is it the foundation of his teaching. 
From the prominent place which morality holds 
in his teaching it would appear that its incul- 
cation, the putting of it on the right ground, 
was thought by him to be a very important 
part of his mission. It was to the reform of 
the popular morality that he addressed himself 
with relentless energy from the beginning of his 
mission to its close. Against the t^pocrisy, 
narrowness, and hatred, the half-heartedness, 
conceit, and cruelty of the dominant parties in 
Jewish life, he shot his sharpest words of re- 
proof and correction. He could hardly have 
expressed himself in more decided and un- 
mistakable terms, had he declared that he rec- 
ognized no salvation which was not conditioned 
upon the recognition and practice of morality. 
He never disparaged this life. On the contrary, 



38 SALVATION. 

it appears to have been the underlying presump- 
tion of his teaching that the chief thing for 
men to do is to set themselves right with refer- 
ence to their daily duties and relations towards 
one another. To set themselves right, — this 
was fundamental in the morality of Jesus, for 
in it everything depends on the disposition. 
Truthful, clean, and pure this must be, as the 
condition of a right life ; and all external actions 
find their worth determined by reference to this 
inward standard. Those who " draw near with 
their mouth and honor God with their lips" 
he denounces as hypocrites, after the manner of 
the Prophets. 1 Treasures should be laid up in 
heaven, because it is important that the heart, 
which follows the treasure, be in the right 
place. 2 Now, that right place can be one place 
only. An undivided heart is essential to a 
right moral life. Hence it is impossible to 
serve God and mammon. Singleness of heart, 
unity of aim, are indispensable moral requisites. 
If the eye be single, the whole body shall be 
full of light. 3 Unless the aim be undivided, 
the life has no promise of strength or victory. 
One must die to one's lower life, if one will 
i Matthew xv. 7, 8. 2 Ibid. vi. 19. 8 Ibid. vi. 22. 



SALVATION. 39 

truly live, — " he that loseth his life for my sake 
shall find it." 

From this universal ethical point of view a 
multitude of particular and minute directions 
for conduct is not to be looked for. A new era 
in morals has begun, and the life of man is 
liberated from the hard restraint of arbitrary 
rules and left to its free development from 
the inward source of right belief and feeling. 
" Those who stood watching the career of Jesus 
felt that his teaching, but probably still more 
his deeds, were creating a revolution in mo- 
rality, and were setting to all previous legisla- 
tions, Mosaic or Gentile, that seal which is at 
once ratification and abolition. While they 
watched, they felt the rules and maxims by 
which they had hitherto lived die into a higher 
and larger life. They felt the freedom which 
is gained by destroying selfishness instead of 
restraining it, by crucifying the flesh instead 
of circumcising it. . . . It no longer seemed 
to them necessary to prohibit in detail and 
with laborious enumeration the different acts 
by which a man may injure his neighbor. Now 
that they had at heart as the first of interests 
the happiness of all with whom they might be 



40 SALVATION, 

brought into contact, they no longer required 
a law, for they had acquired a quick and sen- 
sitive instinct, which restrained them from do- 
ing harm. But while the new morality incor- 
porated into itself the old, how much ampler 
was its compass ! A new continent in the 
moral globe was discovered. Positive morality 
took its place b}^ the side of Negative. To the 
duty of not doing harm, which may be called 
Justice, was added the duty of doing good, 
which may properly receive the distinctively 
Christian name of Charity. And this is the 
meaning of that prediction which certain shep- 
herds reported to have come to them in a mys- 
tic song, heard under the open sky of night, 
proclaiming the commencement of an era of 
* good will to men?" 1 

The sum of the teaching of Jesus respecting 
the ethical salvation of men is expressed in the 
celebrated principle which he declares contains 
all the law and the Prophets : " Whatsoever 
ye would that men should do to you, do ye 
even so to them ; " which is of the same im- 
port as the direction to love one's neighbor as 
one's self. " Men " and " neighbor " having re- 
1 Ecce Homo, Boston, 1878, pp. 204, 205. 



SALVATION. 41 

ceived a universal application in the interpreta- 
tion of Jesus, the limits of race and social con- 
dition are removed, and the world is opened to 
the sympathy and interest of each individual. 
Since love cannot be commanded, freedom be- 
ing essential to its existence, these words should 
be regarded as expressing the universal ethical 
principle of man'& development, in accordance 
with which he can alone find his true life, his 
salvation from moral evil. The central ethical 
principle of Jesus, that the disposition is the 
all-important factor in conduct, finds also here 
its application. For if this precept be in- 
terpreted by his spirit and example, its true 
meaning will be seen to be nothing short of an 
inspiration of love and a renunciation of self, 
from which follows such a consecrated service 
of man as distinguished him whose life is ex- 
pressed in the simple words, u He went about 
doing good." 

In the moral teaching of Jesus the love of 
wealth and the striving for its accumulation are 
disapproved as endangering the higher life. Not 
to mention the woe pronounced upon the rich, 1 
it is declared to be "the deceitfulness of riches" 
1 Luke vi. 24. 



42 SALVATION. 

which choked the seed that fell among thorns 
and made it unfruitful. 1 The love of riches 
makes one who was inclined to follow the di- 
vine call turn back, 2 and makes another regard- 
less of spiritual interests. 3 The service of mam- 
mon is said to be incompatible with that of God. 
Indeed, the claims of the kingdom of God are 
supreme, the ideal is high, and all lower rela- 
tions and interests must yield to that which 
men are enjoined to " seek first." He that 
putteth his hand to the plough and looketh 
back is not fit for this kingdom of Renuncia- 
tion. Love for relatives, the burying of the 
dead, wedding joys, — none of these must be 
suffered to detain him whom truth and duty 
call to this kingdom of Consecration. Let the 
dead bury the dead ! If an eye or hand offend, 
pluck out, cut off! See that thou enter into 
life, though maimed and naked ! 

The ethical doctrine that the doing of one's 
duty is ample reward, that the good should not 
be pursued for the sake of profit or pleasure, 
is decidedly taught by Jesus. The reward 
of service, be it great or small, is a free gift, 

1 Matthew xiii. 22. 2 Ibid. xix. 21-26. 

* Luke xii. 16-20. 



SALVATION. 43 

whether the lord of the vineyard bestow much 
or little. 1 One should lend without hope of 
receiving anj^thing in return. He who has 
wrought well, has at the best done no more 
than his duty, and may still expect not to 
regale himself, but to serve his master at sup- 
per, receiving no thanks for having borne the 
burden and heat of the day. 2 Whatever power 
of salvation resides in morality must, indeed, 
express itself according to this principle, since 
on no other does conduct have any quality of 
spiritual life, or even, according to Kant, any 
moral quality. , 

The moral fruitfulness in the life, the ethi- 
cally saving power of interest in the spiritual 
welfare of those who by reason of weakness 
have need of kindly consideration, is a fact to 
which many a noble and tender character has 
borne witness. Jesus, himself a fine illustration 
of this spirit, enjoined it in words of great 
pathos and force. The abstaining from offend- 
ing the " little ones," the " cup of cold water" 
borne to them, have been set forth in simple 
and tender words which will be spoken of 
wherever the Gospel shall be preached. " You 

1 Matthew xx. 1-16 ; vi. 35. 2 Luke xvii. 7-10. 






44 SALVATION. 

cannot step my journey for me, cannot carry 
me on your back, cannot do me any great ser- 
vice ; but it makes a world of difference to me 
whether I do my part in the world with or 
without these little helps which fellow-travellers 
can exchange." l It makes a world of differ- 
ence to us, too, whether we tender the cup of 
cold water, and, if need be, stoop to bind up the 
fellow-traveller's wounds, or pass by on the 
other side. Better for us were it, if we are 
recreant to this duty, that a millstone be hanged 
about our neck and we be cast into the sea. 
The fortune of those who keep this great ethical 
law is not more blessed than is the judgment of 
those dreadful who break it. 

3. The Religious Factor. — Important, how- 
ever, as is the ethical factor in salvation, Jesus 
did not leave the deliverance of men from sin 
dependent on this alone. He had a too sure 
insight, knew too well what was in man, not to 
discern the human need of a higher strength 
and support in the stress of temptation than 
are furnished in man's moral intuitions and 
sentiments, — the need of trust, faith, and hope 
in a Divine Providence, — in a word, the need of 

1 W. C. Gannett. 



SALVATION. 45 

Religion. At the centre of his teaching of 
religion is the idea of God as the Father of men. 
With him this is not, first of all, a doctrine. It 
is rather chiefly the expression of his profound- 
est feeling and belief, of his religious conscious- 
ness. He felt himself to be the Son of God, 
in a unique spiritual relation, but no less on 
this account the Son of man. His model prayer 
he taught to his disciples, instructing them to 
address his Father in heaven as theirs. Proof 
for the existence of the Father he seems never 
to have thought of asking for himself, much 
less of giving to others. The intimate relations 
of human fatherhood — its love, interest, help- 
fulness — are to him the earthly type of the rela- 
tion of God to men, — the fatherhood which 
will not give a stone when asked for bread, and 
will extend open arms of welcome to the peni- 
tent prodigal, though returning in misery and 
squalor. There remains now no limitation of 
race. It is not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and 
Jacob to whom Jesus directs men, but the 
Universal Father. If some are the children 
of the evil one, it is because of their spiritual 
kinship ; essentially they are the children of 
God, as He would have them spiritually be- 



46 SALVATION. 

come. Practical in the highest degree and of 
saving efficacy does this doctrine become in his 
application of it to men. As children of God 
they are enjoined to be perfect as He is perfect, 
to strive after godlikeness, to bless those who 
curse them, to love their enemies that they may 
be like their Father in heaven, who maketh His 
sun to shine on the evil and on the good, and 
sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. 1 
Thus does he transfigure morality into religion, 
breathing into it the breath of a new life, as- 
piration for a divine fellowship, and the feeling 
which belongs to a divine service. Thus should 
men be exalted to the height of religious con- 
sciousness which he himself occupied, — the 
consciousness of being children of God. So 
high a religious conception as this has never 
been attained by any other teacher, — a concep- 
tion showing so deep an insight into the spirit- 
ual capacities and needs of man, and making a 
provision so simple and so adequate for his 
salvation. 

That one so pure as was Jesus, living in such 
high converse of spiritual fellowship with God, 
should have a keen sense of sin and its dread* 
1 Matthew v. 44-48. 



SALVATION. 47 

ful consequences in the life of man, goes with- 
out saying. His conception of his mission, his 
consecration and sacrifice, find their interpre- 
tation in this. Dull of spiritual discernment, 
hard of heart, having ears and hearing not, 
obdurate and blind, he finds men to be, not by 
reason of original depravity, but of their own 
choice. As free and capable of accepting the 
truth and choosing the divine life, does he al- 
ways address them, with an appeal to con- 
science and the better impulses. As estranged 
from God and in darkness, he appeals to them 
to return to their allegiance and to the light. 
The Father is ready to welcome them. Heaven 
is moved to joy at their coming. They are 
even sought with unwearied solicitude. The 
shepherd is not at peace, with his ninety and 
nine safely sheltered, so long as one wanders 
lost. It is, indeed, these lost, bewildered souls 
whom Jesus himself came to " seek and save." 
The whole economy which he represents is one 
of pitying tenderness, love, and mercy. Heaven 
bends benignant and full of yearning over a 
darkened world, to watch and support his mis- 
sion. One condition is, however, imposed upon 
the impenitent, — repentance (nerdvoia), — a 



48 SALVATION. 

change of mind, disposition, affections. To 
call sinners to repentance, this Jesus declares 
to be his mission. 1 Sin must, indeed, have its 
dreadful course and work its inevitable anguish. 
The wretched prodigal must dwell with swine 
in a land seared by famine, must feel the curse 
and shame of his sinful life, until he is moved to 
confess that he has sinned and is unworthy to be 
called a son, before the paternal clemency can be 
extended to him. But when the sinner has thus 
set himself right in relation to the Father ; when, 
no sacrifice being required but that of his own 
pride and evil passions, he has become softened 
and reconciled through sorrow and suffering, — 
then does forgiveness rush forth to meet him, 
and he is welcomed and crowned amidst great 
rejoicing as the son who was lost and is found. 
What simplicity, what tenderness, what deeps 
of pathos, are here ! How is the great, hard 
world-order of law softened with pity and 
transfigured by the touch of love ! 

To seek the kingdom of God and its right- 
eousness is, according to Jesus, to attain salva- 
tion, — that is, to enter into that community of 
devout souls which he came to establish on the 

i Luke v. 32. 



SALVATION. 49 

earth. The required righteousness must, how- 
ever, exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. 
It was not the merely outward observance of 
ceremonies, but an inward likeness to God. 
This righteousness was a new religious idea as 
apprehended and taught by him, an old principle 
transformed ; for in it the old separation of man 
and God is removed, and the human soul re- 
nounces its will and gives itself up in love and 
trust to the Father. They who hunger and 
« thirst after righteousness are among the blessed, 
for they shall be filled. In fellowship with 
God, in the God-consciousness, as he knew it, 
shall they find peace and everlasting strength. 
Let them take his soft yoke and easy burden, 
and they shall have rest, not only from weari- 
some ceremony and hollow formalism, but also 
from the fatal bondage of sin, and with him 
enter into liberty and life in God. A light 
yoke and an easy burden ! Strange paradox ! 
Wondrous invitation ! This sorrowful and bur- 
dened soul, this great cross-bearer, invites men 
to come to him for rest ! Yet the resolving of 
this paradox reveals the secret of salvation as 
discerned and taught by Jesus. In communion 
with God, in the sense of not being alone be- 



50 SALVATION. 

cause the Father is with him, in love, trust, and 
faith, in doing righteousness with singleness of 
heart, in fulfilling a divine mission although 
uncomprehended and abandoned by the world, 
a man in mortal weakness and shaken by temp- 
tation finds an invincible strength. The yoke 
of such a service is soft to his neck; the heaviest 
cross, an easy burden. . 

This coming to him, this prominence given 
to his personality, is a unique feature in Jesus' 
teaching of salvation, — a feature which places 
his interpreters in the dilemma of either charg- 
ing him with the most audacious assumption, 
or admitting that he was profoundly conscious 
of holding to men the relation of exhibiting 
an ideal type of life, in the appropriation of 
which salvation was pre-eminently, if not alone, 
to be found. The everlasting or eternal life, 
the idea of which is central in his conception 
of the saving of men from sin, he represents 
as manifested in himself, as to be communicated 
to the world through his personality. This 
divine life-principle, by which the earthly ex- 
istence of man is transfigured and glorified, the 
life in faith and love and spiritual striving, is 
to be attained by belief in him. " He that 






i 



SALVATION. 51 

believeth on the Son bath everlasting life," is 
a great saying which no magical interpretation 
can exhaust ; but it must be understood in the 
light of the declaration that it hath been given 
to the Son to have life in himself as the 
Father hath it in Himself. To acquire eternal 
life by faith, in Jesus is, accordingly, to believe 
in his life of consecration, obedience, worship, 
and love, and make it one's own. The sim- 
plicity and directness of the process of salva- 
tion as thus taught by Jesus, compared with the 
complicated " plan of salvation " as set forth 
in Christian theology, call to mind Lessing's dis- 
tinction between the Christian religion and the 
religion of Christ. 1 

By the life of Jesus, however, by the power 
of his personality as manifesting truth, are men 
to be saved, according to his teaching, and not 
by means of his death. To come to him, to 
follow him, to keep the commandments, to 
renounce earthly possessions, to seek the king- 
dom of God, — these things must he do who 
would have eternal life. In his Sermon on 
the Mount, in his discourses generally before 

1 " Lessing's Theological Opinions," Universalist Quarterly, 
April, 1881. 



52 SALVATION. 

his departure from Csesarea Philippi for Judaea, 
there are no allusions to a connection between 
his death and his work as Saviour ; and nowhere 
do we find him teaching that belief in his death 
or in any effects to be wrought bj' his death 
has a saving efficacy. One passage, however, 
presents some difficulty, and a difference of 
opinion has arisen in its interpretation. In 
Matthew xx. 28, Jesus says that he "came not 
to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to 
give his life a ransom for many" But there is 
here no mention of faith in his death, nor of 
any subjective appropriation of it as a means 
of salvation. To his death are, indeed, ascribed 
the meaning and effect of a ransom, — for as 
implying his death, we ought probably to in- 
terpret the words " to give his life." The inter- 
pretation hinges on the meaning which belongs 
to " ransom." The original meaning is " price 
for redeeming ; " and if it is to be taken strictly 
in that sense, here it can only mean that one 
life, that of Jesus, was given and accepted in 
the place of the lives of many, that is, to save 
them from death. But the connection, as well 
as the whole analogy of his teaching, appears 
to require the interpretation that his death, like 






SALVATION. 53 

his life, is to be regarded as saving, delivering, 
setting free morally and spiritually from bond- 
age to sin. That the connection favors the 
ethical and not the legalistic interpretation, is 
evident from this, that there the ministering 
quality, the service, of his life is made the cen- 
tral idea of his mission. It is in this way that 
he releases, or ransoms, men. His death, the 
crowning act of this service, is just such a 
Xvrpov, or " ransom." * 

1 Winer and Meyer, the highest grammatical authorities, lay 
stress upon the preposition apri, which, as here used, means 
" instead of ; " and the latter maintains that substitution is ex- 
pressed by it here. Baur takes this view also, and regards the 
words as not spoken by Jesus, so strongly does he think them 
opposed to the analogy of the teaching of the Gospels. On 
the contrary, De Wette says that " ransom " is not to be taken 
as indicating an exchange, but dynamically as marking an 
effect. The passage is no doubt difficult, and grammar ap- 
pears to come into conflict with analogy of teaching in its 
interpretation. But the question may fairly be raised whether 
or no it is not hyper grammatical to attempt, as Meyer does, to 
establish a doctrine upon a single preposition in writings com- 
posed as the Gospels were, and having had such a fortune as 
they have had in the hands of copyists, — more especially 
when the words in question were undoubtedly spoken in an- 
other language than that in which they were written down in 
the record. In this case one will surely not be accused of 
hermeneutical violence in making the preposition yield to the 
analogy. 



54 SALVATION. 

III. — The Pauline Doctrine. 

Jesus died upon the cross ; but the greatest 
of his followers saw in that instrument of tor- 
ture the glorified central figure in a universal 
plan of salvation, and gave it a unique interpre- 
tation for the ages. Saul of Tarsus, reared in 
the traditions of Judaism and according to the 
tenets of the strictest of its sects, learned in 
Rabbinical lore, a student of the law and the 
Prophets, a zealot in his religion, a persecutor 
of the Christians, was suddenly converted to 
the religion of Jesus while on his way to Da- 
mascus as its most dreaded enemy. Upon the 
details of this conversion it is not necessary 
here to enter, nor to discuss its probable prepara- 
tions and antecedents. It is enough that Saul, 
the persecutor of Christianity, became Paul, its 
greatest apostle ; for as an apostle, or one sent, 
he regarded himself from the eventful hour of 
his conversion. From that hour he gloried in 
the cross, which before he had looked upon 
as the detestable symbol of a noxious fanati- 
cism. Now rather did it have for him a world- 
historical significance, and stand for the breaking 
down of partition walls of Judaistic national 



SALVATION. 55 

exclusiveness, for the abolishing of distinctions 
of race and sect in relation to the Divine favor, 
for the universal offer of the Divine grace to 
men, and for universal liberty and salvation. 
Although it might be to the Jew a stumbling- 
block and to the Greek foolishness, to this seer 
it was " the power of God." 

The great Apostle to the Gentiles, properly 
so called because he apprehended Christianity 
as a universal principle, takes as the central 
thought of his Gospel the idea of Righteous- 
ness, that " master-impulse of Hebraism." The 
relation of man to God — or, in other words, relig- 
ion — he brings under this conception. The fit- 
ness, the Tightness, in this relation ; conformity 
to God's will ; " harmony with the universal 
order ; " the state of mind which God will have 
in men, — are all expressed by this great word. 
To him the task of religion is to bring men into 
this relation, and its great problem is how to 
do it. Now, if he had been dealing with religion 
in general, it is evident that his discussion of 
the question would have taken a very wide 
range, and we should not have had what may 
very properly be called his distinctive contribu- 
tions to religion, or what he calls his " Gospel." 



56 SALVATION. 

It is, however, as a Christian that he approaches 
the problem, and as a Christian it is that with 
masterly insight he seizes upon the personal fac- 
tor which, as we have seen, Jesus made so con- 
spicuous. For him righteousness is no mere 
abstraction. It has had once for all, for all 
ages and for all men, a perfect embodiment and 
manifestation. It has been lived ; and in the 
life which had revealed it he sees the whole 
meaning which Christianity has for him, his 
sole hope for personal deliverance from sin and a 
universal principle and power for the salvation 
of the world. Of his own spiritual trans- 
formation, or conversion, he says it is a revela- 
tion of the Son of God in him which it has 
pleased God to make. 1 Hereby has come into 
his life and into that of every Christian a new 
religious consciousness, in which there are no 
more the bondage and limitations of Judaism, 
but liberty and a spiritual principle victorious 
over the flesh. The spirit (irvevfia) it is which 
the Christian has received, and whereby he is 
distinguished from what he was before, whether 
Jew or Gentile. They who receive Christ into 
their life by faith receive this spirit ; for he, the 
1 Galatians i. 15, 16. 



SALVATION. 57 

Lord, is spirit, 1 and where the spirit of the Lord 
is, there is liberty. Xo longer now is their sal- 
vation dependent on aught external, but it is 
conditioned on fellowship and union with God. 
In receiving the Son, they themselves become 
sons of God ; for this spirit which they have 
had revealed in them, this Christ-principle, is 
the spirit of adoption whereby they cry, " Abba, 
Father." 

The absolute necessity of the mediation of 
Christ in man's attainment of righteousness, in 
his justification or salvation, is the great thesis 
of the Pauline soteriology, Of the two kinds 
of righteousness which the Apostle recognizes, 
that of "works" and that of u faith," the 
former is declared to be unattainable. This is 
legal righteousness, or righteousness under the 
law, which, so far as Jews were concerned, 
could be attained only by fulfilling the Mosaic 
law, and so far as the heathen were concerned, 
by following the law " written in their hearts." 
It is the righteousness of obedience, of entire 
fulfilment of the law, whereby alone from this 
point of view man can come into the required 
relation to God. That man cannot fulfil the 

1 2 Corinthians iii. 17. 



58 SALVATION. 

law, and hence can never compass the righ- 
teousness which is of works, is the fundamental 
proposition of Paul for this negative side of his 
doctrine of salvation. His own profound con- 
sciousness of sin should doubtless not be left 
out of account in appreciating his judgment on 
this point. But why is the law thus ineffectual ? 
It is through the law that the consciousness of 
sin comes : " the law is spiritual ; " it is " holy, 
right, and good." 1 How, then, is that whose 
" design was life " found to u issue in death " ? 
The answer to this is found in Paul's concep- 
tion of the " flesh," — a term by which he 
designates not the body only, but the sensuous, 
earthly nature of man, which is prone to sin, — 
in a word, all that is opposed to the " spirit." It 
is the seat and organ of sin. In this lies the 
reason of the inability of the law to "make 
alive." It is " weak through the flesh." 2 The 
imperative of the law, its high ideal, its convic- 
tion of sin, are ineffectual against this fatal 
power, this fleshliness, this tendency to sin. 
But is there not " the law of the mind," or 
reason, " the inner man," to contend against the 
flesh? The fact that the Apostle recognizes this 

1 Romans vii. 7-17. 2 Ibid., viii. 3. 



SALVATION. 59 

principle in the unregenerate man, this mind 
which 4< delights in the law of God," shows 
how far he was from the Augustinian point of 
view in his anthropology, — from the doctrine of 
the fall of man and hereditary depravity. Yet 
the " mind " is unable with the law and with 
experience to prevail against the flesh ; and the 
14 wretched man," after all his ineffectual strug- 
gle, at the end of the pathetic conflict is brought 
44 into captivity to the law of sin." 

Here, from the Apostle's point of view, would 
man be left, weak, defeated, hopeless, were it 
not for Christ, who alone could redeem him ; or 
rather, were it not for the grace of God in 
Christ. " For what the law could not do," what 
the rt inner man," or the reason, " the law of the 
mind," was unable to do in its endless and in- 
effectual struggle with the flesh, " God hath 
done, who on account of sin sent His own son 
...and passed sentence of condemnation on 
sin in the flesh ; so that what is required by the 
law is accomplished in us who walk not accord- 
ing to the flesh, but according to the spirit." 1 
Thus is salvation placed by Paul in immediate 
dependence on the person of Christ, who is a 

1 Romans viii. 1-4. 



60 SALVATION. 

means employed by the Father for enabling man 
to acquire the righteousness which shall put 
him into relations of harmony and peace with 
God. The old order has passed away. The 
law is abrogated in the sense that its require- 
ments possess a power to effect righteousness. 
Man cannot be justified by the works of the 
law, because without Christ he is unable to 
render a perfect obedience. We have not, how- 
ever, here an artificial scheme, nor a scheme of 
salvation by magic, nor yet the Augustinian one 
of " satisfaction." Paul does not degrade Christ 
to the place of a victim sacrificed to appease the 
wrath of God. It is contrary to the whole 
temper of the Apostle's mind and the whole tone 
of his teaching, that a man should come to so 
great a fortune as that of righteousness through 
the fiction of appropriating the merits of Christ. 
To manifest the righteousness of God is the 
death of His Son set forth, and the " propitia- 
tion " is a mere reference to Jewish ceremonial, 
and must not be pressed, since it has no vital 
connection with Paul's real doctrine of salvation. 
So precious an offering as this blameless life, 
and nothing less than this, is, indeed, well 
adapted to manifest the Divine sense of the 



SALVATION. 61 

enormity of sin, against which the Divine righ- 
teousness is relieved in glaring contrast. But 
to Paul the death of Christ had its chief signifi- 
cance for men. Upon them was its effect. The 
great Martyr on the cross turned his face, dis- 
torted with agony, not towards the unrelenting 
heavens to affect the Deity, but upon the earth 
for the sake of men. Accordingly, Paul declares 
that " God was in Christ, reconciling the world 
unto Himself." That God needed to be recon- 
ciled to men, seems never to have entered his * 
mind. In his death, the destruction of his flesh, 
Christ is manifested to Paul as spirit and as spir- 
itualizing. Now that he has passed through the 
great transformation and even the great victory, 
he is no longer to Paul the material, temporal, 
limited Messiah of the Jews, but a universal 
spiritual and quickening power. If he has ever 
known Christ after the flesh, he says, he now so 
knows him no longer, since he has died for all ; 
nor will he henceforth know any man after the 
flesh, since, Christ having died for all, all have 
died, their death to the flesh being included in 
his dying on their behalf. 1 Here, indeed, we 
have a " substitution," and the only substitution 
1 2 Corinthians v. 14-15. 



62 SALVATION. 

which Paul knows. Christ, dying on behalf of 
all, typifies in his death the death of all men to 
the flesh and to sin, " that they should no 
longer live to themselves, but to him who died 
for their sakes." 

As a representative of the race, then, it is 
that, in Paul's view, Christ in his life and in 
his death stands forth ; yet not as a representa- 
tive of the race only, but as one who loved all 
men and would bring them all to his own spirit- 
ual attainment. In his life he had been a per- 
fect manifestation of " the righteousness of God," 
and thus an ideal set up for men and a quicken- 
ing spirit. In his death all men died to sin, and 
the world was ideally reconciled to God ; that 
is, men assumed such a relation to Him as to be 
proper subjects of the forgiveness which He was 
always ready to grant. No longer does the law 
overshadow them with its antique and awful as- 
pect of bondage. Christ has rendered it a perfect 
fulfilment, being without sin. " The handwrit- 
ing of ordinances that was against us " he has 
" nailed to the cross," and now the level way of 
salvation lies open to men through participation 
in the life and power of his triumphant spirit. 

One factor is yet, however, wanting to effect 



SALVATION. 63 

the great work of men's salvation through Christ. 
The righteousness to be attained is that through 
faith. This faith, as Paul apprehends it, is as 
far as possible removed from magic and mystery. 
It does not effect a transfer of the " merits " of 
Christ to man. It is belief in the whole manifes- 
tation by Christ of the higher life, of the spirit, 
— belief in his death and resurrection. They 
who believe in Christ are one with him ; with 
him they have died, having crucified the flesh, 
and with him have they risen to newness of life. 
" Faith is the bond," says a great interpreter of 
Paul, 1 "of a fellowship of life with Christ, in 
which Christ so lives in us that all which in us 
is only limited, only belongs to our selfish ego, 
is removed, and we no longer live to ourselves, 
but in him." In the same vein writes one of 
the acutest literary interpreters of the Apostle : 2 
" Identifying ourselves with Christ through this 
attachment [of faith], we become as he was ; we 
live with his thoughts and feelings, and we par- 
ticipate, therefore, in his freedom from the ruin- 
ous law in our members, in his obedience to 
the saving law of the spirit, in his conformity to 
the eternal order, in the joy and peace of his 
1 F. C. Baur. 2 Matthew Arnold. 



64 SALVATION. 

life in God." Faith does not, however, effect 
this consummation alone. It " works by love," 
by recognition of and response to that divine 
principle to which was due the sending of Christ, 
and his own offering up of himself for men. 
Without this, faith could not bring about that 
entire union with Christ in which we partici- 
pate in his self-sacrificing spirit, die with him to 
the selfish lusts of the flesh, and have a share 
also in his victory. 

Is there, then, no place for works, for the law, 
for morality in this scheme of the Apostle ? Far 
be. it! They who so apprehend him as to an- 
swer this question in the affirmative do not know 
his profundity, his practical sense. They forget 
that he was of the Hebrew stock, pre-eminent 
in its genius for righteousness. They suppose 
him to have mistaken entirely the practical 
morality of Jesus, to have misconceived the 
whole spirit and method of his Master. This 
polemic against the law, this panegyric of faith, 
are but the strong contrasting of Judaism and 
Christianity, and do not affect, much less invali- 
date, the conceptions of duty, obedience, and 
service. He did not so misunderstand the re- 
ligion of his nation as to regard it as altogether 



SALVATION. 65 

legalistic and external, as taking no account of 
the disposition and finding no place for pardon. 
A stern moralist in his judgment of himself, he 
never loses sight of the moral law and human 
responsibility. We accordingly find him de- 
claring with solemn emphasis that God will 
render to every one according to his works, and 
proclaiming that tribulation and distress shall 
be upon every soul whose works are evil. Works 
and faith together are the two essential factors 
in attaining righteousness. With what unwea- 
ried energy did he spend himself in the service 
of his Master and of men! To him the union 
of the soul with Christ through faith was a 
partaking of the Christ-spirit of consecration to 
toil, to the dungeon, to stripes, or to the cross 
for the sake of men. The righteousness of faith 
was consummated in the righteousness of loving 
service and all-renouncing sacrifice. 

IV. — The Doctrine in Hebrews. 

The Epistle to the Hebrews, the author of 
which is unknown, presents the doctrine of sal- 
vation from a peculiar point of view. Whether 
the writer was influenced, as some hold, by 
the Alexandrian philosophy or not, he un- 



66 SALVATION. 

questionably held a view of the relation of Juda- 
ism to Christianity quite different from Paul's. 
In Paul the two are related as letter and spirit, 
servitude and sonship; in this writer, as pre- 
figuration and completion, as shadow and realitj 7 . 
The Epistle was evidently written for Jews, 
with the design of showing them that Chris- 
tianity was a fulfilment of things typified in 
the old religion, and of making easy their transi- 
tion from the one to the other. Interest in this 
writing, so far as it relates to salvation, centres 
in its apprehension of the office of Christ, 
which is here treated under the conception of 
the priesthood. Christianity is a completion 
of the Jewish religion, that "shadow of things 
to come," in the dignity and grandeur of its 
priestly, atoning institution. A " Priest for- 
ever, after the order of Melchizedec," Christ 
assumed the sacrificial office, and " once for all" 
entered into the sanctuary, and " with his own 
blood obtained for us everlasting redemption." 
Into no sanctuary made with hands, however, 
did he enter, but "into heaven itself, now to 
appear in the presence of God in our behalf." 
Unpauline as is this transfer of the scene of 
Christ's work from earth to heaven, there is a 



SALVATION. 67 

reminiscence of the doctrine of Paul as to the 
reconciling efficacy of Christ's offering of him- 
self in the fine words : " How much more shall 
the blood of Christ, who by his everlasting 
spirit offered himself without spot to God, 
purify your conscience from dead works, for the 
worship of the living God ! " From the point 
of view of this writer the work of Christ con- 
sists chiefly in consummating an atoning work 
shadowed forth in the ceremonial of the Old 
Testament. Depreciated as a " shadow," the 
old economy is exalted by the very fact of its 
prefiguring function. The Epistle contains no 
reference to the Pauline contrast of the righ- 
teousness of faith and of works, and faith itself 
receives an interpretation quite different from 
Paul's absolute trust in the saving grace of 
God in Christ. Far from being set forth as a 
distinctively Christian virtue, examples of its 
exercise are drawn from Jewish history or 
legend. It is declared to be " the substance of 
things hoped for, a conviction of things not 
seen." Not as a mystic fellowship of the life 
with Christ is it taught or illustrated, but 
rather as a holding fast to supersensible things, 
a looking for that " city which hath founda- 



68 SALVATION. 

tions " whose builder and maker is God, and 
for that " better and heavenly country." The 
exaltation of the priestly, atoning office of Christ 
in this Epistle, and its implied depreciation of 
the present life, may suggest an inquiry as to 
the extent of its influence in shaping a long 
prevailing type of Christian theology. Too 
much, perhaps, have men interpreted the New 
Testament by this work of an unknown author 
which did not even find a place in the Canon 
without decided opposition. 

V. — Salvation and Science. 

Mr. Huxley, in one of his Lay Sermons, ex- 
presses a preference for justification by verifica- 
tion over justification by faith. The inference 
which one would naturally draw from this ex- 
pression is that the sort of justification which 
Mr. Huxley prefers is, in the opinion of a rep- 
resentative of science, a real, scientific justifica- 
tion, while the other is unsubstantial, imagi- 
nary, — in a word, unscientific. Now, to brand 
an opinion or process as unscientific is, in these 
days, in the opinion of very many people, to put 
upon it the seal of condemnation and annul- 
ment. It may, accordingly, be well to give a 



SALVATION. 69 

little space in this monograph on Salvation to 
the inquiry whether or no there is, after all, 
an irreconcilable difference between these two 
ways of attaining righteousness, and whether 
Mr. Huxley's placing of them in so sharp a con- 
trast is not due to his misapprehension of the real 
nature of the latter. As to verification, no one 
knows better than they who are greatly occu- 
pied with it that far from being in any way op- 
posed to faith, it is so much dependent thereon 
that without it it cannot proceed at all. Every 
process of the kind depends upon putting trust 
in certain ultimate principles which, if not in- 
tuitively discerned and hence requiring faith 
in the immediate declarations of the human 
consciousness, are the products of human ex- 
perience through many ages, and as such call 
for belief in the integrity of the nature of man. 
That much depends, too, in the construction of 
any science, on the trustworthiness of human tes- 
timony, every scientific investigator will concede. 
All the great sciences are the accumulations 
of the contributions of observers and students 
often unknown to one another and separated 
by great intervals of time or space. How 
much depends, likewise, on the sureness of an 



70 SALVATION. 

eye or a hand, the accuracy of perception, the 
correctness of inference, and the freedom from 
bias in the observer, is very apparent. The 
great authorities in science, men of creative 
power, whose genius marks epochs in knowl- 
edge, are objects of faith, one might almost 
say of worship, to their followers. What yawn- 
ing chasms would open in the continuity of 
science if one could no longer have faith in the 
sure insight and conscientious accuracy of a 
Newton or a Darwin! A lapse of faith in its 
conspicuous authorities would work such con- 
fusion and catastrophe in the world of science 
as doubt of the integrity and truth of Jesus 
would cause in the Christian Church. More- 
over, faith as a factor in scientific verification 
has yet another application. Will any one 
deny that faith in a great master in science, in 
the sense of a trustful appropriation to one's 
self of his spirit, his enthusiasm, his devout 
consecration to truth, and his sympathy with 
Nature, — in a word, a fellowship of life with 
him, — might be vastly helpful to a disciple? 
If, now, verification is not carried on without 
faith, or at least if faith is a very important 
factor in it, it would appear to follow that the 



SALVATION. VI 

justification by verification which Mr, Huxley 
advocates is also not without relation to faith. 
He who should undertake to acquire righteous- 
ness by verification, that is, by scientifically or 
experimentally establishing the ethical and 
spiritual principles on which it rests, would 
evidently be greatly aided by faith, and in par- 
ticular by that application of it in which he 
might adopt as his own the virtues, the spirit, 
and the enthusiasm whereby a great Master of 
Righteousness had triumphed. On the other 
hand, the justification by faith, which modern 
science regards as unreal and sentimental, will 
be found, when stripped of the magic which 
has so long disguised it, to proceed quite in the 
manner of verification, and to be in fact a sort 
of righteousness according to science. For to 
live conformably to verified principles, whether 
in the sphere of the physical life or of the soul, 
is to live scientifically. Whoever, then, pur- 
sues righteousness, trusting in a great moral and 
spiritual order, which experience has verified 
as the true order for human beings, and con- 
formity to which has been found for many ages 
to render the lives of men strong, sweet, and 
noble, is, though not far from the kingdom of 



72 SALVATION. 

Heaven, still within the realm and method of 
science. And it is, surely, no unscientific pro- 
ceeding to take, as Paul did, a great principle 
illustrated in a great life as the basis for a phi- 
losophy of living, and to carry out the pursuit 
of righteousness in conformity with it. The 
dash of mysticism in his idea of identification 
with Christ in his death does not invalidate his 
essentially scientific position, which is that a 
mode of life w r hich has been verified and shown 
to be of the noblest sort is, therefore, to be com- 
mended and trustingly adopted. Even as to 
this matter of dying, which Paul puts in a 
mystical way, — is it not, after all, in the highest 
sense scientific, that is, verifiable, that he who 
will live to the higher things must die to the 
lower? One would scarcely presume to say 
that Jesus was dealing with an unreality, an 
image of the fancy, and not rather with a most 
substantial, not to say awful fact, when he as- 
serted that he who would save his life must lose 
it. Do not even the scientists the same, — that 
is, die to indolence, prejudice, and the senses, 
that they may live to the truth, to reason, to 
discovery ? No one, assuredly, will charge the 
great Goethe with being unscientific, and it is 



SALVATION. 73 

be whom Mr. Arnold regards as u an unsus- 
pected witness to the psychological and sci- 
entific profoundness of Paul's conception of 
life and death." x " Die and le-exist ! " he says ; 
" for so long as this is not accomplished, thou 
art but a troubled guest upon an earth of 
gloom." 

It may very well be imagined, however, that 
Mr. Huxley would say that Paul did not con- 
fine himself to the sphere of the verifiable, but 
included God in his scheme, teaching that sal- 
vation is by His grace in Christ. Now, from the 
point of view of science, God is not verifiable, 
and the grace of God is a fiction with which it 
can have nothing to do. But the scientific 
character of Paul's method of justification by 
faith is not affected by his conception of a Being 
from whom, as he assumed, proceeded the order 
of spiritual phenomena and laws with which he 
was dealing. The relating of these to an ulti- 
mate Power which he could not explain, neither 
supports nor invalidates the interpretation of 
them in relation to the particular end, — righ- 
teousness, or justification. Science, too, has its 
ultimate powers and principles, which it does not 

1 Saint Paul and Protestantism, London, 1870, p. 149. 



74 SALVATION. 

pretend to account for or comprehend. Yet 
its particular relatings of phenomena and induc- 
tions of laws proceed with as much certainty as 
if it had fathomed the unknowable, or could 
give an account of the nature of matter or force. 
If science were without faith and righteousness 
without verification and a scientific basis, then 
might there be, indeed, an irreconcilable discord 
between these two most powerful and most 
fruitful agencies in human development. 

VI. — Secular Salvation. 

It has already been intimated in the foregoing 
section that if Salvation were stripped of the 
disguise of magic which has been put upon it, it 
would be found to have points of relation with 
science otherwise unobserved. It may fairly be 
presumed, too, that when thus revealed in its 
real nature it will be seen to have more to do 
with this world, to stand in more relations to 
the secular life of men, than has commonly been 
supposed. From the magical point of view it 
has generally been understood to be a means of 
escaping, or a condition of having escaped, the 
penalties of the violated law of God, — safety, 
refuge from the storm of Divine wrath which it 



SALVATION. 75 

was supposed would especially break forth in the 
life to come. Thus the chief interest in salva- 
tion has been centred in its relations to that life, 
and it has been given a predominant other- 
worldly tone. Now, it has already been pointed 
out how much stress was laid by Jesus on con- 
duct, and how Paul, notwithstanding his vigor- 
ous polemic against the law, still attached the 
greatest importance to righteousness in the 
sense of the right relation of man to the Divine 
order, regardless of worlds, whether of this or 
some other, and of times and eternities. In 
order, then, that the pursuit of salvation be not 
degraded so as to become chiefly an eager, self- 
ish seeking for a remote and undefined good, 
and a hasty scramble for security from some 
other- world peril, it would seem that all sound 
thinking and healthy feeling concerning it must 
assume a decidedly this-world tone. Not that 
the life to come, that destiny, is of no interest 
and importance, but that it is of supreme impor- 
tance to right conduct that men lay slighter 
stress upon times and places and far more upon 
moral and spiritual relations, and believe that 
righteousness attained and held fast in this 
present life will open to its possessor all the 



76 SALVATION. 

mansions of the Father's house. The real 
danger to which theology is exposed is not that 
of becoming too practical, but that of being 
turned into a theurgy. So soon as the chief 
interest in righteousness is transferred from this 
earthly theatre of man's struggle and tempta- 
tion, and concentrated upon future security, 
theology becomes degraded to the rank of a 
system of magic, the show of which man may, 
indeed, be interested in watching, but such a the- 
ology will touch his life only a little more than 
any common jugglery. It is not the theurgy of 
the now departing theology w T hich has nurtured 
great characters, but the practical morality, the 
simple faith of Jesus, and the tender but ma- 
jestic life which the Gospels make known. 

If, now, the conception of salvation ought to 
be extended so much as to include the deliver- 
ance of man from all that binds him in the stress 
and struggle of his earthly life, from all that 
hinders his attainment of righteousness here, 
then there should be included among its agen- 
cies many of what may be called the secular 
factors or forces. If his life does not consist in 
the abundance of the things which he possesses, 
neither does it consist in their paucity. Since 



SALVATION. 77 

it is his fortune to work out his own salvation, 
he may well rejoice in having unlimited means 
and agencies at his disposal, for it is ordained 
that he shall not do this in his closet nor in the 
desert, but in the midst of men. His nature is 
so complex, its several faculties are so dependent 
on one another in their development, that a well- 
ordered adjustment and harmony of all is essen- 
tial to the true culture of any. To isolate any 
one of his faculties in its training is like the 
folly of applying special cultivation to one branch 
of a vine and leaving the stock in wildness and 
weeds. The true salvation is that of the entire 
man. It is the harmony of his whole nature 
with the great order of things in which it is 
placed. The salvation of the " soul " is a mis- 
nomer borrowed from the vocabulary of magic. 
Let us know henceforth only the salvation of 
man, — a healthy soul in a healthy body. A 
right theory of salvation requires a sound an- 
thropology no less than a sound theology. To 
our peril do we leave physiology and hygiene 
out of the account. Paul, with his keen practi- 
cal sense, saw the importance of this phj^sical 
side of man to a true soteriology, and did not 
fail to take the body into his system of righ- 



78 SALVATION. 

teousness. "I so fight," he says, " not as one 
striking the air, but I beat down my body and 
bring it into subjection." 1 To him, as to every 
right-thinking person, the whole nature of man 
is sacred, and each part is to be regarded with 
awe. The body is " the temple of the Holy 
Spirit," 2 — a holy place for the worship of the 
soul. " Therefore," he exclaims, u glorify God 
in your body." By no hot-house methods with 
a single faculty did he look for fruitage. " Pre- 
sent your bodies a living sacrifice." How, in- 
deed, like one vainly striking the air, does he 
appear who with eager, nervous haste pursues 
the phantom of salvation for his " soul," while 
body, intellect, and moral faculty remain in sad 
neglect as having no share in the Divine fortune 
of righteousness. The sturdy Apostle may very 
well have wrought out his salvation in part 
by beating down his body. The problem may, 
however, be approached from another side, and 
we may find our secular salvation promoted by 
such a training of the body as shall render it 
the ready servitor of the soul in its attainment 
of the higher life, — no longer a weight, but a 
support. 

1 1 Corinthians ix 26, 27. 2 Ibid., vi. 19. 



SALVATION. 79 

The principle, then, of this secular branch 
of our theme is that all the physical, intellect- 
ual, and ethical forces which contribute to the 
development of human nature, to the upbuild- 
ing of man, should be taken into account and 
utilized in the working out of his salvation, 
and that the conception of salvation should be 
enlarged so as to include all these. The con- 
duct of education, the making of laws, the es- 
tablishment and direction of institutions, the 
observance of social amenities and courtesies, 
ethical training, sanitary and hygienic regula- 
tions, the momentous struggle against intemper- 
ance, the striving for political honesty and 
purity, the humane ministries of charity, aspira- 
tions and efforts in the interest of brotherhood 
and universal peace and good-will, — these and 
their kindred, whose name is legion, should be 
regarded and employed as agencies in compass- 
ing human salvation, — that is, in making man 
complete. The religion which leaves these out 
of account may, indeed, be a fine celestial 
scheme, but it is not a religion for men, and 
will not long endure upon the earth. 



80 SALVATION. 

VII. — The Intelligent, Emotional and 
Voluntary Factors. 

In the fourth Gospel Jesus is reported to 
have said, " Ye shall know the truth, and the 
truth shall make you free." This recognition 
by the highest authority of an intelligent factor 
in salvation may well claim our attention, more 
especially since, in the current expositions of 
the doctrine, it is too much disregarded. The 
conception of salvation as a growth proceeding 
according to the laws of the mind brings this 
factor into prominence, and assigns it its true 
value. Subject to these laws, the process of 
salvation may very well be assumed to take 
the natural order, — that is, the order in which 
knowledge has the precedence. The differ- 
ence between the product which is called sal- 
vation and the product which we may name any 
other mental state does not consist so much in 
the difference of its factors as in that of the sub- 
ject matter. The condition in question is a 
peculiar state of the will and feelings resulting 
from the occupation of the knowing faculty, 
or the intelligence, with a peculiar kind of 
facts, or truths. Salvation is the overcoming 



SALVATION. 81 

of tendencies, passions, influences, temptations, 
which are contrary to the laws of the nature of 
man, the putting of one's self in harmony with 
these laws, and the persistent, consecrated living 
in accordance with them. It is something more 
than this. It is conformity with this order as 
a Divine order, as proceeding from and imposed 
by a Heavenly Father, a striving for obedience 
to and fellowship with Him in faith. Now, the 
particular order of facts with which the intelli- 
gence is occupied in the course of this process 
may be generally characterized as moral and 
spiritual, — facts and laws which relate to con- 
duct and the religious life. A clear perception 
and a right knowledge and relating of these are 
the first and indispensable requisite, without 
which the appropriate feelings and volitions are 
impossible. With knowledge, then, salvation evi- 
dently begins. First of all, man must find 
himself, his position and relations, in the great 
order of which he is a part. He must recog- 
nize himself as a spiritual and responsible be- 
ing, acknowledge the Power above, and know 
the fruitful words of prophet, seer, or Christ. 
Jesus appears to have laid so much stress 
upon knowledge as to declare that eternal life 



82 SALVATION. 

consists in knowing God and the Son whom He 
has sent. This knowledge may, assuredly, be 
regarded as inclusive enough, and, if had with 
the requisite intensity, as likely to produce the 
feelings and volitions appropriate to the state 
of salvation. 

Important, however, as are knowledge, edu- 
cation, and instruction, these are ineffectual 
without the emotional and voluntary factors. 
Knowledge is not power. It is only one of the 
conditions of power. Neither is it salvation, 
but merely a condition of it. The beatitude 
is not pronounced on those who know righ- 
teousness, but on those who hunger and thirst for 
it. The product of intelligence, the material 
of knowledge, is supplied in vain unless the 
emotional, affectional, and voluntary powers — 
the great motive forces — perform their part. 
The prominence given to love in the teachings 
of Christ is not without profound significance, 
— love to God being made of supreme moment 
in religion, and love to man in morality. We 
have seen, too, how Paul, a profound psycholo- 
gist as well as theologian, accentuated the emo- 
tional factor in connection with faith in Christ. 
It is not irreverent, let us hope, and certainly 



SALVATION. 83 

not irrelevant, to cite here the testimony of an 
eminent scientist and philosopher : " Already 
we have seen that the connection is between 
action and feeling ; and hence the corollary 
that only by a frequent passing of feeling into 
action is the tendency to such action strength- 
ened. . . . Not by precept, though heard daily ; 
not by example, unless it be followed ; but only 
by action, often caused by the related feeling, 
can a moral habit be formed." 1 Well did Paul 
feel the weakness of the law against the flesh and 
the profound need of a " quickening spirit " to 
effect the deliverance of man from bondage to 
his lower nature. What is it but infirmity of 
will which speaks in the pathetic cry of the 
" wretched man" for rescue from " the body 
of this death " ? So far as education may con- 
tribute to salvation, it is evident that it must 
address itself as well to the emotions and the 
will as to the intelligence. Each man's duty 
to himself and to those whom he may influence 
is to bring these great motive forces as much as 
possible under influences and discipline favor- 
, able to moral and spiritual development. 

1 Herbert Spencer, Study of Sociology, New York, 1882, 
p. 367. 



84 SALVATION. 

The freedom of the will confers upon man, 
subject of course to influences, the fearful 
power of determining his own destiny. The 
pathetic words of Jesus, " But ye would not," 
are a solemn recognition of this fact. In this 
life, certainly, and in any life in which man re- 
tains his identity, the choice of good or evil is 
his and his alone. Salvation cannot, assuredly, 
be forced upon him, neither can he be kept in 
a state of sin and condemnation if he choose 
it not. The power of the keys is in his own 
hand. Himself may he bind or loose ; for him- 
self, open any door of darkness or of light. 
Not without some appearance of reason, ac- 
cordingly, has doubt been thrown upon the 
dogmatic affirmation of the salvation of any or 
of all. Good reasons there were, indeed, for 
this doubt, if man's choices were alone to be 
taken into the account. But while man is 
free, he is not abandoned. The unrelenting 
powers of Truth and Light have a hold upon 
him and the infinite persuasions of Love forsake 
him not. His deathless conscience, with its 
eternal protest and inexorable demands, testifies 
to the preponderance of good in himself. Not 
only does the Eternal beset him behind and 



SALVATION. 85 

before and lay His hand upon him, but God is 
immanent in man, and there is hope of the 
transformation of every deformed soul into the 
Divine likeness so long as God is. 

VIII. — "Probation" and Moeals. 

The conclusion which must be drawn from 
the foregoing section is that salvation is sub- 
ject to the law of cause and effect, — a law of 
which psychology as well as physics has to take 
account. Certain .psychological conditions or 
causes, certain factors of knowledge, feeling, and 
will, are the necessary antecedents of the condi- 
tion called salvation. Deliverance from sin im- 
plies a conviction of it ; a perception of the law 
of which it is the violation ; repentance towards 
God, the author of the law ; a hunger and thirst 
after righteousness and a resolute will to attain 
it. When these factors are operative, the state 
of soul which they condition invariably follows, 
unless counteracting causes intervene. In the 
absence of these factors of life, other factors, 
those of moral and spiritual death, are in opera- 
tion, bringing forth with fatal certainty their 
appropriate product. Therefore, each succes- 
sive state of the soul, each expression of its 



86 SALVATION. 

strength or weakness, is dependent on, and in 
a sense determined by, antecedent conditions, 
— power begetting power, obedience bringing 
forth life, and disobedience bringing forth death. 
Accordingly, under the operation of the law of 
causation, man is perpetually in a state of pro- 
bation ; that is, his conduct to-day determines 
in a measure the moral and spiritual conditions 
under which to-morrow's conflict must be en- 
tered upon. To-day, yesterday's defeat or vic- 
tory contributes its influence in depression and 
despair, or in uplifting and hope. Every success 
in the endless moral struggle makes subsequent 
success easier, and every failure makes it more 
difficult. To say this is to affirm that character 
is a constant factor in spiritual development; 
that as it is, namely, has been made by antece- 
dent choices, it determines in a large degree 
the effect of influences, instruction, circum- 
stances which may be brought to bear upon 
men. Probation so conceived is interminable, 
and of course never comes to a fixed or final 
condition. There is no period in it at which 
action and responsibility cease and judgment 
begins. Judgment proceeds hand in hand with 
action, since every deed is a cause on which its 



SALVATION. 87 

effect or judgment follows under unchangeable 
law. There is, there can be, no u final judg- 
ment" for a soul to whose activity no final 
limit is set. 

Now, it is evident that in probation thus re- 
garded all the moral forces have their due place 
and influence. Character is recognized as an 
indefeasible possession, and responsibility con- 
tinues unbroken. Every act of obedience, ser- 
vice, fidelity, or of disobedience and falsity, has 
its legitimate effect. All attainment of excel- 
lence is an increment of the soul's moral stature 
or strength. Inexorable justice has its course, 
no artificial scheme interfering to cheat it of its 
claims. Man is lulled to no false security, and 
is not taught to trifle with the law. God is not 
mocked. The same unchangeable laws prevail 
so long as the soul exists in this life and that to 
come. The course of character is continuous, 
regardless of time and scene. All the moral in- 
fluence and all the stimulus and support which 
accrue from a sense of the inviolability of the 
moral order, from the conviction that what is 
gained belongs forever to him who will hold it, 
and what is lost must be regained by arduous 
struggle, remain in force unimpaired. Virtue 



88 SALVATION. 

is encouraged by the assurance that it belongs 
to God's eternal order, and that all which is 
mighty and all which is good in the universe 
contends for and with it. Vice is not encour- 
aged by the fallacious teaching that through a 
scheme of substitution it can evade the law, and 
by a tardy repentance sustain a claim to parade 
in the garments of virtue. There is fixed no 
period of time at which all that the soul has 
gained by fidelity may be lost by reason of not 
having fulfilled certain conditions, and all that 
it has lost by infidelity may be gained by ful- 
filling them. If, now, in place of a rational 
probation of this kind, we suppose its opposite 
to obtain, it is evident that we renounce all the 
chief aids to salvation which man's moral nature 
supplies. If we say that the law has been satis- 
fied by an atonement, do we not render nugatory 
the law, and blunt the point and invalidate the 
force of the great Pauline announcement of 
tribulation and anguish upon every soul whose 
works are evil? If we declare that character is 
estimated at its ethical worth up to a certain 
period, say at death, or the " final judgment," 
and after that time moral distinctions are not 
at all taken into account, but the soul's rank in 



SALVATION. 89 

the scale of spiritual excellence is determined 
by its having accepted or rejected that atone- 
ment, do we not juggle with righteousness and 
weaken men's faith in the reality of the moral 
order ? Are we not in danger of confounding 
moral distinctions and subverting ethics, if we 
teach that a man who all his life has neglected 
moral culture, has indeed been positively im- 
moral, may be " saved " at the moment of death 
by accepting the atonement and " casting him- 
self on the merits of Christ " ? Let us beware of 
putting a premium on the last chance. Rather, 
let us no longer teach that there is any last 
chance. Oar theology will be radically unsound 
so long as this word " saved" is not emptied of 
its magical meaning, is not "depolarized," — so 
long, in fact, as it means anything to us but 
abandonment of sin and growth into a moral 
and spiritual life according to the psychological 
laws of growth. 

But not only is this theory of probation im- 
moral, it may be questioned whether it does not 
run counter to a right psychology. It rests 
upon the presumption that immediately after 
death, according to the old theology, or after 
the "final judgment," according to the " new 



90 SALVATION. 

theology," man enters upon an unchangeable 
moral condition for eternity. Those who " die 
in sin," according to one of these theologies, 
those who are " finally impenitent," according 
to the other, will be forever excluded from 
righteousness. Right thinking and right living 
are supposed to be in some way put out of their 
reach. Now, in what way this is done or comes 
about is a matter of great interest to psychology 
and to ethics as well, as, indeed, is the question 
whether or no it can happen at all. In the 
first place there appears to lurk a contradiction 
in the term " finally impenitent," affirmed of 
beings having liberty of choice. Liberty and a 
w final " condition are incompatible, since he 
who can choose can never get himself into a 
fixed or permanent state, even if he were to 
choose to do so. The power of choice would 
imply the power to get out of it. Final im- 
penitence is an unpsychological fiction. But 
the popular idea of the punishment of sin is 
that it is brought about by the direct inter- 
ference of the Deity ; and it would accord with 
this idea to say that if man cannot get himself 
into this fixed condition, then God can put him 
into it. But in taking from man the power to 



SALVATION. 91 

choose, that is, to change his moral condition, 
God would deprive him of that without which 
he would not be a human being. " Petrified 
into continuity of sinfulness," God's noblest 
creation would be discrowned and mutilated. 1 
Some theologians put the close of the period 
of probation in an alleged permanency of char- 
acter regarded as the natural consequence, under 
the laws of the soul, of long continuance in evil 
doing. A man, it is said, may become fixed in 
the habit of sinning, so that he cannot do oth- 
erwise than sin, — that is, cannot choose virtue. 
But he who cannot choose virtue cannot choose 
sin. To him who can do but one thing there is 
no choice ; and where there is no choice there 
can be no sin, since sin is the choice of wrong 
when right might have been chosen. On this 
theory, then, a man may exercise and develop 
his power to sin to such a degree that he is no 
longer able to sin at all ! The doctrine leads to 
an equal absurdity on the side of virtue. It in- 
volves a contradiction to say that a man may 
become fixed in doing right in the sense that he 
cannot do wrong. For to do right in the ethi- 

1 The Doctrine of Probation Examined. By G. H. Emer- 
son, D.D. Boston, 1883. p. 159. 



92 SALVATION. 

cal sense implies a choice of right, and there is 
no choice of right to him who cannot choose 
wrong, since in a choice there must be two pos- 
sibilities. He, then, who cannot do wrong is 
not a moral being, and cannot do right. Ac- 
cordingly, the phrase " permanency of charac- 
ter " is a contradiction. A permanent character 
would be no character at all, since character 
involves freedom of choice. 

IX. — Universality of Salvation. 

Down to the present time in the history of 
the world salvation has been limited to a small 
number of men. Exactly what a disciple had 
in mind when he asked Jesus whether or no 
there be few that are saved, it may be difficult 
to determine. But the indirect answer of his 
Master is significant, " Strive to enter in at the 
narrow door." Did he mean by this answer 
that it is more important that each one strive to 
attain salvation than that he know how many 
do really attain it ? But do the words, " Many 
shall seek to enter in and shall not be able," 
cut off hope for some? Rather the injunction 
to strive for admittance implies its possibility 
for all, and that the failure of some is due to 



SALVATION. 93 

their defective seeking. That these will never 
rightly seek and find an open door is by no 
means implied. If by salvation we mean com- 
plete harmony with the universal moral and 
spiritual order, then " the man Christ Jesus " 
may well be the only one who has attained it. 
But if " the narrow door " admit those who 
knock at it, bearing, indeed, many defects, but 
animated by a master-purpose to attain right- 
eousness, then may many be regarded as having 
entered in. But how vast has ever been and 
is the number of those who do not care for 
righteousness, and crowd the broad way so 
pathetically pointed out by Jesus ! That so 
great a multitude of men wander in darkness 
with " aimless feet," stumbling into degrada- 
tion and bound in chains of passion, lust and 
selfishness ; that so many dark places on the 
earth have not been visited with the healing 
ministry of truth ; that Nature holds relentless 
sway, and smites with merciless retribution the 
unhappy children of ignorance and sin ; that 
Cruelty scourges the weak and helpless till 
Pity weeps and turns her face away ; that Des- 
potism grinds its subjects into the dust, and 
smothers thought aud manhood in Siberian 



94 SALVATION. 

mines ; that the bitter ages are so long and 
man's moral progress is so slow, — all these 
things reveal problems and mysteries at which 
faith falters and reason is dumb. How far is 
the universal reign of the Kingdom of God 
from its consummation ! How do the tears and 
agony of the Son of Man seem to have been in 
vain, and the blood of martj^rs to have been 
poured out upon a thankless, fruitless earth ! 
Yet into the awful front of this mystery Faith 
flings the great declaration that " God will have 
all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of 
the truth." Verily, of the times and the seasons 
no man knoweth. This, however, we have 
good reason to believe, that whatever may be 
God's time, and in whatever mystery His 
method may be hidden, He is the Universal 
Father, and will, in His own way and season, 
seek His lost, benighted children until He finds 
them. If we are to believe in Jesus as an 
interpreter of God's spirit and providence ; 
unless his ministry to men was a mask of love 
and pity to hide the face of indifference and 
mock the world with a show of sympathy ; if 
he truly represented the solicitude of Heaven for 
men, — • then must we believe that the Father's 



SALVATION. 95 

heart is ever warm towards the prodigal, and 
the doors of His house stand ever open to the 
son who returns in penitence. 

The universality of salvation — the hope of 
all and the faith of many — would be a most 
fitting consummation of a theistic government 
of the world, and is a very natural conclusion 
from its theistic origin. The salvation of a 
part and the ruin of the rest is a legitimate 
conclusion from Atheism. If the world, in- 
stead of being the product of Wisdom and 
Love, be the product of Chance, and have only 
a fortuitous development, the wonder were that 
not a part, but the whole, of the human race 
should not find its end in darkness. There 
are difficulties, no doubt, in interpreting the 
order of the world and of human life under the 
category of design. There are disorders and 
discords where we look for order and har- 
mony, evil and weakness where we look for 
good and strength ; the dark problem of hered- 
ity appears to indicate a design to propagate 
infirmity forever. But in spite of the diffi- 
culties which the world presents for a theistic 
theory, the alternative offered to thought is 
Theism and a beneficent purpose sometime to 



96 SALVATION. 

find its consummation in universal good, or 
Atheism with its corollary of infinite indefinite- 
ness and uncertainty. The fact that we are 
unable to reconcile the existing physical and 
spiritual order with a beneficent purpose as we 
understand it, furnishes no presumption against 
the existence of such a purpose and its un- 
broken operation before our eyes. No one 
will dare maintain that the malign purpose of 
an unloving Creator is being fulfilled in the 
world and in man. The doctrines of the 
Fatherhood of God and the arbitrary, endless 
exclusion of any of His children from light 
and life furnish a contradiction which the 
human reason cannot endure. The love which 
" springs eternal in the human breast " would 
suffer endless unrest in view of the hard se- 
verity of a Father shutting the door of recon- 
ciliation against His penitent children. The 
saints in light, if they may be supposed to bear 
harps and crowns, would cast harp and crown 
at the foot of the throne, and declare themselves 
unworthy to worship the All-Holy, if it be not 
permitted them to speed to the world of pain 
with ministry of pity and message of peace and 
pardon. The doctrine which affirms the failure 



SALVATION. 97 

on the part of God to do all that He is able to 
do consistently with the nature of man to effect 
the salvation of all, denies His Fatherhood, and 
sets Him before men as a Being who cannot 
inspire trust, love, and worship in the highest 
meaning of these emotions. It is fatal to the 
noblest and purest expression of religion. 

But if God fail not on His part, may not man 
fail and miss of salvation ? This dangerous gift 
of freedom, may it not prove the ruin of many ? 
Man is confronted w T ith the conditions of salva- 
tion. If he do not accept them? We have 
already seen that God cannot do violence to 
human freedom by limiting man's period of pro- 
bation and preventing him from choosing salva- 
tion at any time in the existence of the soul, 
without destroying the integrity of the soul it- 
self. He cannot, assuredly, do a similar violence 
in compelling man to accept the conditions of 
eternal life. Indeed, to accept must be volun- 
tarily to take, freely to choose. Does the salva- 
tion of any or of all men, then, partake of the 
uncertainty which attaches to all forecast of re- 
sults in which a free will is a factor ? From a 
purely speculative point of view, yes. Leaving 
God out of account, yes. But it is not alto- 



98 SALVATION. 

gether a speculative question, and God may not 
be left out of the account, will not be left out. 
Indifferent and inactive, indeed, He cannot 
be, — the God of Jesus and of the New Testa- 
ment, the Father. Given this premise, and as 
has already been pointed out, human reason can- 
not refuse the conclusion that the resources of 
Divine wisdom, truth, and love will be employed 
without reserve to win men from sin. Un- 
happily weak is the faith which admits the 
doubt that these resources will be effectual in 
compassing the utmost salvation. Will the Om- 
nipotent, the All-loving, fail in such a task as 
this ? Will truth be forever ineffectual against 
error, light against darkness ? Will the Word 
of God fail in teaching and enlightening the 
darkened mind ? Will the obdurate, the hard- 
hearted, resist endlessly the chastening of the 
Divine love ? Are the remorse, the scourgings, 
the darkness, which attend on disobedience 
without terrors and motives for men ? Do not 
the arid waste and desolation on which the 
prodigal soul is stranded suggest the hospitable 
plenty of the father's house, and bring the be- 
wildered son to himself? Shall the Son of Mq,n, 
who on earth went about doing good, have no 



SALVATION. 99 

ministry of teaching, of healing and pity, wher- 
ever souls languish in sickness of sin? Will 
his great prophecy fail of fulfilment, that if he 
were lifted up from the earth he would draw 
all men unto him? 

Let us not disguise the difficulties which this 
great problem of the salvation of all men has 
presented and still presents to many, in view of 
the power of sin in human nature ; of the awful 
record of depravity and degradation, of cruelty 
and inhumanity ; of the persistence of evil, rear- 
ing its brazen, indomitable front through all the 
ages of history ; of the lapses of virtue and the 
sudden fall of souls long steadfast from summits 
of light into depths of darkness ; of the appar- 
ently ineffectual struggles and hopeless defeats 
of the powers of good in their interminable con- 
flict with the mighty forces of wrong ; of the 
slow progress and tardy triumphs of even the 
good cause of the Christ, with its great original 
Example and spiritual Light, and its vast army 
of martyrs, scholars, heroes, and consecrated 
leaders of pre-eminent genius and power. To 
those whom this awful front and unconquered 
presence of Wrong appall, who with faltering 
confidence in right dare not affirm its ultimate 



100 SALVATION. 

victory, there is no greater word to be spoken 
than that of him who in his own person over- 
came the world and proved the possibility of 
victory for all : " Have faith in God." " It 
sometimes puts a terrible strain upon our faith 
in God's fatherhood to contemplate the suffer- 
ings of which this earth is so full ; to see the 
millions of men who come into this world only 
to be buffeted by its adversities and torn by its 
severities, dragged through its hells and hurried 
down to the dark death of the sinful. The only 
thought which saves us from crying out of our 
sympathizing hearts that God has made a fear- 
ful mistake in creating men is the faith, which 
holds us in spite of all this misery, that God is 
leading man through the shadows to the stars, 
that strife and sorrow are growing less, and 
man is being reclaimed and fitted for a true 
sonship." x 

Mr. John Stuart Mill, although inclined to 
agnosticism, thought it conducive to mental and 
moral health to believe in God and a future life, 
if one could do so. Let the creed of optimism, 
of the final prevalence of the moral and spiritual 

1 The Fatherhood of God (Manuals of Faith and Duty, 
No. 1). By Rev. J. Coleman Adams, D.D. p. 88. 



SALVATION. 101 

forces, be likewise commended to men. Hap- 
pily it may be commended on abundant evi- 
dence. As the central thought and essential 
spirit of Christ ; as a consummation without 
which his revelation of the Father is an enigma ; 
as " the one far-off, divine event " towards which 
the development of man, as shown in history, ap- 
pears to be surely moving ; as the only solution 
of the problem of evil, and the only satisfaction 
of the unrest of the " practical reason " of man 
in view of the struggles and hardships which 
virtue undergoes, — it has adequate support for 
a rational faith. It lies not far from the thought 
of the philosopher who interprets human life 
and history by the principle of evolution, nor 
from that of the poet to whom 

u Through the ages one increasing purpose runs ; " 

for he who through the ages of the world's 
history can trace a Divine purpose ever evoking 
order and good, is very near having attained the 
prophetic vision and faith by which such a pur- 
pose is seen to run victorious through the ages 
to come. 

THE END. 



